Man accused of cooking girlfriend on trial

HOUSTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Jury selection was under way Monday in the trial of Texas man accused of slaying a woman and cooking her dismembered body on barbecue grills, prosecutors said.

Timothy Wayne Shepherd, 28, of Houston, has been charged with choking his former girlfriend, Texas A&M engineering student Tynesha Stewart, to death, cutting up her body and burning it in grills on his apartment patio, The Houston Chronicle reported.

The challenge for Shepherd's defense attorneys was to find jurors who could "compartmentalize" the facts of Stewart's slaying as separate from the bizarre story of what happened to her body, the newspaper said.

"The details are the details, we can't change them, but the details are irrelevant as to whether Tim Shepherd is guilty of murder," said Chip Lewis, Shepherd's defense attorney. "Nothing that happened after Ms. Stewart's death changed the facts about how she died."

Authorities say Shepherd has confessed to many aspects of the slaying. Court records show police recovered 30 pieces of charred bone and hair from Shepherd's apartment, but Lewis contends there's no DNA evidence proving they belonged to Stewart, making it a case without a body, the Chronicle reported.