I Can’t Resist a Good Cannibal Story

By Bill Doyle

The trouble with most cannibal stories is that the cannibal often turns out to be psychotic. There are very few cannibal stories in which the cannibal is a normal, well-adjusted person who just so happens to have a taste for human flesh. Alas, the most recent cannibal story in the news carries on the trend of psychos.

A Connecticut man was ordered to 60 years of confinement to a mental hospital for killing a man and then eating his brain and eyeballs. The cannibal, Tyree Lincoln Smith, was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in July. According to a story at ctpost.com, a Yale psychiatrist was crucial in getting the insanity plea, and Smith offered to eat her. She declined. The psychiatrist testified that Smith was listening to the voices in his head that told him to kill and then eat the brain to understand human behavior and the eyes to see into the spirit realm.