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Gruesome discovery: Woman's dismembered body found spread out over Bronx nabe
- By KEVIN SHEEHAN, JAMIE SCHRAM and LARRY CELONA
- Last Updated: 4:33 PM, February 26, 2013
- Posted: 8:22 AM, February 26, 2013
The remains of a missing Bronx mom were found scattered around her neighborhood this morning — and cops are questioning the woman's son in her death, law-enforcement sources said.
Sources identified the victim as 45-year-old home health aide Tanya Byrd, who went missing yesterday.
Police brought the son in after finding a bandsaw and gloves in the apartment, law-enforcement sources said. The apartment also reeked of bleach and the shower curtain was missing, the sources said.
The 23-year-old son, Bashid McLean, who had reported his mother missing, was led away in handcuffs this morning from the apartment he shared with his mom, neighbors said.
But the man's aunt claimed Bashid had nothing to do with Byrd's disappearance.
“[The cops] came over, asked him for a picture of his mother. He got frustrated.
He [doesn’t] know where pictures of his mother are,” Byrd’s sister, Cassandra McLean said. “They thought he was being a problem.”
McLean, who lives in Washington DC, said her nephew being taken into custody was “crazy.”
Bashid told his aunt that an old boyfriend of Byrd’s dropped by their St. Mary's Park Houses apartment yesterday — and that was the last time anyone saw her.
“He [the ex-boyfriend] came over yesterday and walked out with her in the morning, yesterday morning,” McLean said. “That’s what her son told me on the phone just now.”
Elizabeth Cruz, a neighbor and friend of Byrd’s, couldn’t believe the missing would willingly leave her 6-year-old son behind.
"Her young son … is very sick. He's got Down’s Syndrome,” Cruz said. “He really needs her. He [doesn’t] talk. All he can say is, 'Mommy, mommy!’ "
At least four travel and garbage bags were found scattered over several blocks in the Morrisania neighborhood, police and witnesses said.
Cops got a 911 call from a passerby at about 4:30 a.m., reporting a bloody roller $bag at East 158th Street and Cauldwell Avenue — about a half-mile away from Byrd’s apartment, officials said.
A right leg was found on Eagle Avenue near 156th Street, while a torso was discovered on Eagle near 158th Street, witnesses said. A head was found at Cauldwell and 158th, according to witnesses.
“I saw the police find it. It was on top of the garbage, the recyclables. It looked like a female right leg,” said a 53-year-old witness at Eagle and 156th.
“It was in a plastic trash bag but that [plastic garbage bag] was in a traveler’s bag. That family is going to suffer, somebody is going to wake up without their mother.”
Cops have interviewed neighborhood witnesses who saw a car randomly dumping bags, according to a nearby building superintendent.
“That’s creepy, I don't like it at all. It feels like some Freddy Krueger stuff,” the 49-year-old building super said. “The police said it was a woman.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/nypd_bags_believed_to_hold_human_Kt6DHGcVXuq6WUzWH NaBaK
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http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u.../facebook1.png
An alleged picture of purported victim Tanya Byrd (Photo Credit: Facebook)
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Son, 2nd person arrested in NYC dismemberment case
By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press | February 27, 2013 | Updated: February 27, 2013 3:12pm
NEW YORK (AP) — Two men — including the victim's son — were arrested Wednesday on charges of cutting up a woman whose dismembered remains were found in trash bags on city streets, but police said it wasn't yet clear who killed her.
The son, Bahsid McLean, 23, and his 26-year-old acquaintance William Harris were arrested on charges of unlawfully dissecting a human body and hindering prosecution, but not on murder or manslaughter charges. Police said they were still investigating, however, and that one of the men might be responsible for Tanya Byrd's death.
It wasn't immediately clear whether McLean, whose family described him as a troubled man who had long harbored anger toward his mother, or Harris had lawyers. No phone numbers could be found for the suspects' homes.
Meanwhile, medical examiners worked to determine how the victim was killed in the chilling case, which came to light when a local resident's dog sniffed out one of the bags early Tuesday on a Bronx street.
Byrd, a 45-year-old home health aide, was last seen Monday.
Her remains were stuffed in four bags and scattered along four blocks, police said. The resident's dog found the first bag — a heavy-duty plastic garbage bag stuffed in a duffel bag, with the woman's bloodied leg inside — in a trash pile in the Melrose neighborhood.
Police then found the three other bags and their macabre contents, including the victim's head, part of her torso and other limbs.
Witnesses told police an SUV dropped the bags off sometime during Monday night or early Tuesday morning.
Friends described Byrd as upbeat and generous.
"Anything you would have needed, she would have given it to you," friend Elizabeth Cruz told WCBS-TV.
McLean had a history of psychiatric problems and animus toward his mother, relatives told local media.
"He did destructive things," his father, James McLean, told the Daily News. "He set fires; nobody could control him."
While the case and its discovery were particularly gruesome, there have been similar episodes in the city in recent years.
In one bizarre case, a passer-by found a 28-year-old woman's body in a suitcase while rummaging through some trash in East Harlem in December 2010. After releasing surveillance-camera video of a man wheeling the suitcase down a sidewalk in the area, police arrested Hassan Malik.
He ultimately told detectives he got into an argument with the woman, Betty Williams, choked her with an electric cord, packed her in the luggage and abandoned it in a street, according to a court document.
Malik, 57, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter.
In another case, a 17-year-old girl's body was found wrapped in garbage bags in a Bronx alley in September 2009. The girl, Jamia Hazel, had been stabbed to death.
A 27-year-old man, Darrell Spencer, is awaiting trial on murder and other charges in her death. He has pleaded not guilty.
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Son, 2nd person arrested in NYC dismemberment case - Houston Chronicle
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Bronx mother-murder suspect posed with mom's severed head: sources
- By JAMIE SCHRAM and LARRY CELONA
- Last Updated: 4:59 AM, February 28, 2013
- Posted: 2:17 AM, February 28, 2013
The twisted Bronx man who allegedly killed his mother and chopped up her body reveled in the slaying by snapping a picture of himself holding her severed head, sources told The Post yesterday.
Bahsid McLean, 23, pulled out a cellphone camera, posed in front of a bathroom mirror and snapped the gruesome photo of himself smirking while holding his mother’s head under his arm like a trophy, the sources said.
Then McLean and a buddy stuffed his mom’s head in a bag, packed away the rest of her mutilated body, and dumped the parts with the neighborhood trash — in several locations, cops said.
http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2013...hid_mclean.jpgRobert Kalfus
JUST SICK: Bahsid McLean cut off mom Tanya Byrd’s head and held it to take a picture, sources said.
http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2013...a--300x300.jpg Tanya Byrd aka Tanya Mclean
One of the four bags holding the remains of Tanya Byrd, 45, a home health aide and devoted mother of three, was found in Morrisania early Tuesday morning by a father and son walking their dog.
Her body parts were wrapped in plastic, with some stuffed in luggage, cops said.
Detectives were already disgusted by details of the case: the brutal bedroom stabbing, the blood drained in the bathroom, and the body hacked with a brand-new power saw.
“He’s definitely sick,” a law-enforcement source said. “It’s a ghoulish act. This guy is so mentally defective to do that. That’s pretty outrageous. That’s hardcore s--t.”
Byrd was killed probably late Sunday night or early Monday morning in her Westchester Avenue home, sources said. McLean asked a friend, William Harris, 26, to help him get rid of the body, sources said.
Surveillance video picked up the two men in a Third Avenue hardware store in The Bronx, where they bought a power saw with cash, sources said.
A blade and a box were found in the apartment McLean shared with his mother; the saw was found in Harris’ home, sources said.
McLean was charged last night with second-degree murder, police said. Both men were charged with hindering prosecution and unlawful dissection of a human body. They blamed each other for Byrd’s death.
Cops said McLean killed Byrd because she “wanted him to grow up and move out and be a man.”
Additional reporting by Matt McNulty
jschram@nypost.com
Bronx mother-murder suspect Bahsid McLean cut off mom’s head and held it up to take a picture: sources - NYPOST.com
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