The cannibal doctor Hannibal Lecter, the infamous character from "The Silence of the Lambs" scandalized the world, but he revealed the human cruelty at its highest, which was believed to hide under the cover of civilization.

But after the creepy case of the Viennese cannibal from past August, when police found Robert A. (19) still feasting on his 49-year-old neighbor Josef S. or the 2001 case in Rotenburg (Hessen, Germany), when Armin Meiwes (44), an IT specialist, hungry for extreme homosexual pleasures, consumed 25 kg (60 pounds) from the body of his victim, the IT engineer Bernd Jurgen Brandes, here comes an American case.

Christopher McCuin, 25, killed his girlfriend, filleted and cooked (boiled) parts of her body, before calling the Texan police to tell his deeds made at his mother's home in Tyler, 110 mi (180 km) east of Dallas. The victim was Jana Shearer, 21.

In the house, police encountered the mutilated body of Shearer, one ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a fork sticking from a big piece of human flesh on a plate on the kitchen table.

"He was either going to, had been, or led us to think that he was doing it," said county sheriff JB Smith.

"I frequently heard McCuin and his girlfriend arguing in the house and the yard. They would get pretty loud. They'd yell back and forth and then he would just get in his car and leave," said Freddy Castillo, a neighbor.

Before he called the police, McCuin told his mother and her boyfriend to look in their garage, where they saw Shearer's remains. The couple fled the home and flagged down a police officer, while meanwhile McCuin dialed the police.

Shearer had been seen getting into McCuin's truck on Friday night, but the case does not resume to her horrible death: the killer also seems to have stabbed the boyfriend of his estranged wife.

"The stabbing victim is in critical condition at an area hospital," officials said.

McCuin has been charged with capital murder.

The Dallas Morning News signaled he had a history of violence, attacking his wife and his sister twice previously and he was a drug abuser, behaving oddly.

"He would stand in the roadway and wouldn't let people pass and he would talk to himself. He acted crazy," said next-door neighbor Pam Hightower.