Video: police investigation into the killing

A man has allegedly told police he was instructed by God to kill his girlfriend and cook parts of her body on a stove, in one of the most gruesome murder cases to hit Texas.

Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, was arrested on Saturday after police found an ear boiling in a pot on a stovetop and a hunk of flesh impaled on a fork on a plate at the kitchen table at his mother’s house in the town of Tyler, 110 miles east of Dallas.

After finding the cooked body parts, investigators said Mr McCuin told them that God made him kill 21-year-old Jana Shearer, his girlfriend at the time.

Larry Wiginton, the Smith County Sheriff's lieutenant, disclosed that the suspect was known to authorities and had "a history of violence," including assaulting his estranged wife, his girlfriend and his sister.

Officials believe the latest horrific chain of events began when Ms Shearer was taken by Mr McCuin from her home late on Friday night and killed.

Mr McCuin then drove to his estranged wife’s house, where he allegedly stabbed William Veasley, 42, her boyfriend, who survived the assault.

The suspect was still at his estranged wife’s home when police arrived, but he jumped into his car and escaped after a short chase. "We did not know at the time that he had murdered anyone," Sheriff J.B. Smith told journalists. "We thought it was a disturbance or an assault."

Mr McCuin wasn’t seen again until Saturday morning, when he arrived at the home he shared with his mother and called her into the garage so she could "come see what he had done," Mr Smith said.

His mother and her boyfriend saw the remains of Shearer, authorities said, and the pair fled the home and flagged down a police officer. Mr McCuin then made a separate call to police and told them he had killed Ms Shearer and was boiling her body parts.

Amy Gage, a friend and neighbour of Ms Shearer, said the pair had only been dating a few months and that the community were shocked by the saga.

"We really want to focus on her being a person who loved life, and not what happened to her," she said. "It was such a tragedy. We have to try to focus on the fact that Jana was a good person."

Appearing in court yesterday, Mr McCuin, wearing a jail-issue red jumpsuit, was not asked to enter a plea as he stood before state District Judge Jack Skeen Jr, who remanded him in custody.

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