Family Fears "The Connecticut Cannibal" After His Release From Mental Hospital Confinement Almost 50 Years Early | Crime Alert 4PM 04.30.25

A man found not guilty by reason of insanity after a cannibalistic killing in Connecticut is now being released under supervision, despite strong protests from the victim’s family. A loose kangaroo shuts down an Alabama interstate and causes a crash before being safely captured and returned to its owner. Drew Nelson reports.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Alart hourly update, breaking crime news Now.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm Drew Nelson. A man found not guilty by reason
of insanity after a gruesome killing in Connecticut, is now
being released under supervision, despite strong protests from the victim's family.
Tyree Smith had been confined to Whiting Forensic Hospital since
twenty thirteen after admitting to killing Angel Gonzalez with a
hatchet and a vacant Bridgeport apartment. He told his cousin

(00:25):
he ate parts of Gonzalez's brain and an eyeball while
drinking sake. His trial ended with a sixty year commitment
to psychiatric care, but this year Connecticut's Psychiatric Security Review
Board ruled Smith could be released conditionally. Doctors told the
board his schizophrenia and substance disorders were in remission. Smith

(00:45):
had already spent nine months in a group home in
Waterbury under twenty four hour watch. The new decision allows
him to remain there with fewer restrictions. He will still
be monitored and must keep taking medication. The decision stone
lawmakers and enraged Gonzala his family, who had fought to
keep Smith locked away. To Leith the Fraser, Gunzalez's sister
in law tells WTNH the release came too close to home.

(01:08):
She lives half an hour from the group home. If
he gets to reunite with his family. April twenty fifth
was Angel's birthday.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
He turned fifty seven.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
We didn't get to say we only have ashes.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
And it hurts.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Fraser had called the hospital for five years to check
on Smith, as often as three times a month. At
one point, a secretary told her to stop calling, saying
Smith wasn't going anywhere. Fraser now believed Smith fooled the doctors.
State lawmakers called the board's ruling quote unquote, mind boggling.
Prison records obtained by WTNH show that Smith once got

(01:41):
into a fight while at Garner Correctional Facility. He hid
an inmate in the face and shoved him to the ground,
while the other inmate didn't fight back. After the fight,
Smith was moved to segregation. His file was marked with
a warning quote, the inmate's presence poses a serious threat
to life, property, other inmates, or facility secure. Fraser called
that proof that Smith hadn't changed. The Gonzales family plans

(02:05):
to seek a restraining order. They say that they don't
wish harm on Smith. They just want justice. More crime
and justice news after this. A loose kangaroo shuts down
an Alabama interstate and causes a crash before being safely
captured and returned to its owner. On Tuesday, drivers on

(02:27):
I eighty five near mile marker forty six in Macon
County were stopped by something nobody expected, a kangaroo hopping
in the road. Here's one couple's reaction they caught on
cell phone video. But something lose.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
I did something.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
They got capped all of the.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
But the hell, where are you going? Mighty?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Police said the animal may have caused a two vehicle
crash around eleven fifty am, though no one was hurt.
Both directions of the highway were shut down while troopers
and the owner worked to catch the kangaroo, named Sheila
Patrick Starr. The owner said she escaped from her enclosure
near the family's farm and petting zoo. She was later
treated at Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine. Sheriff Andre

(03:10):
Brunson said during a Facebook live video, quote when somebody
said there was a kangaroo, of course I didn't believe it,
and nobody believed it. But I'm looking at him. We
see a little bit of everything here. Starr used a
tranquilizer dart to calm his kangaroo before loading Sheila into
a vehicle. Jennifer Jean Gordon was last seen September tenth
of nineteen ninety seven in Watertown, New York.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
She was thirty years old.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
A week before she disappeared, she had been released from
a community psychiatric facility. Jennifer hed schizophrenia and was not
taking her medication.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
She didn't think she needed it.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Forty days passed before her mother reported her missing. Jennifer
battled alcohol and drug use. She often stayed with men
who would physically injure her. She and her mother were
fighting over custody of Jennifer's three year old son. Her
mother later adopted the boy. Years passed, no one heard
from her, no credit cards, no social Security, no calls,
no trace whatsoever. In two thousand and three, Detective Gary

(04:04):
Beltch brought a cadaver dog to search the building where
Jennifer once lived before it was set to be demolished.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
They found nothing.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Later, he and a city detective searched nearby fields, looking
for patches of grass with strange colors signs that the ground.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Would have been disturbed.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Detective Belt said, quote, We'd like to see some kind
of closure for the family, one way or another. Jennifer
also went by Jen, Jenna, or Jenny. She may have
used the last name Loomis somewhere between five to three
and five five, between one hundred and ten and one
hundred and fifty five pounds, white, with brown hair and
blue eyes. She had a tattoo of a bloody rose
on her left shoulder, a scar on her upper lip,

(04:39):
and another scar on her calf.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Today she'd be fifty eight. If you know.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Anything about the disappearance of Jennifer Jean Gordon, please call
Detective Gary Belt at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department three one, five, seven,
eight six, twenty six seventy three. For the latest crime
and justice news, follow Crime Alert hourly update on your
favorite podcast app with this crime Alert. I'm Drenelle Sai.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
How could a beautiful, young first grade teacher be stabbed
twenty times, including in the back, allegedly die of suicide? Yes,
that was the medical examiner's official ruling after a closed
door meeting. He first named it a homicide. Why what happened?

(05:26):
To Ellen Greenberg a huge American miscarriage of justice. For
an in depth look at the facts, see what Happened
to Ellen on Amazon. All proceeds to the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.