Inset: Audrey Troncoso (Tom Green County Sheriff”s Office). Background: The apartment complex where Troncoso allegedly dumped some of her boyfriend’s dismembered remains in San Angelo, Texas (Google Maps).
A Texas woman is behind bars for brutally shooting, stabbing, and dismembering her boyfriend, Lone Star State law enforcement says.
Audrey Troncoso, 31, stands accused of one count of murder over the death of 34-year-old Roland Matthew Sheppard, according to the San Angelo Police Department.
On June 24, law enforcement received an anonymous tip that led to the defendant’s arrest and booking later that same day.
During a press conference on Thursday, police described the alleged killer and victim as having a “live-in relationship.” Authorities say Troncoso shot Sheppard in the face, stabbed him multiple times, dismembered his body, and hid portions of his remains in a dumpster.
The anonymous tipster told police they saw the whole gruesome ordeal unfold the night before, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by San Angelo-based CBS affiliate KLST and NBC affiliate KSAN, which collectively broadcast as Concho Valley Homepage.
The witness said the shooting occurred at a residence on Parker Street where the body was subsequently dismembered, according to the charging document. The victim’s torso was then wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper and placed in a dumpster at the Apple Tree Apartments on Baker Street, some 5 miles across town. The rest of the remains were allegedly placed in a car for out-of-state disposal.
Detectives first searched the dumpsters at the apartment complex, but they learned one had already been emptied into a garbage truck. Law enforcement then pulled the truck from its route and directed it toward a landfill. At the landfill, police found a “large black trash bag that was tied at the top with a red tie,” according to the affidavit.
Inside the bag, detectives found “silver shiny metallic wrapping surrounding more articles” and then unwrapped those parcels.
Under the silver wrapping, investigators “discovered copious amounts of red liquid that appeared to be fresh blood” and “a large amount of cut tan carpet and a pair of blue jeans,” according to the charging document. One detective wrote that the items “smelled of fresh blood” and observed that “large portions of the cut carpet and the blue jeans also appeared to be wet with soaked blood.”
In another bag, police found “an obvious dismembered human torso” with “several tattoos” said to be “directly comparable to known images of the victim,” according to the affidavit.
After the bloody discoveries, police executed a search warrant at the house on Parker, where Troncoso was detained.
Inside, the grim evidence piled up, according to law enforcement.
Officers found human remains in containers stored in a red vehicle parked in the driveway, police said. There were also more “obvious human remains mixed with concrete” elsewhere on the property.
During a custodial interview, the defendant allegedly confessed to shooting Sheppard in the face and stabbing him in various parts of his body until he died. She then described “dismembering the victim with several knives and a saw,” according to the affidavit.
Troncoso allegedly went on to talk about disposing of the body.
After “concealing the torso in a trash bag,” the defendant took the remains to the apartment dumpster, according to the charging document. Troncoso then allegedly explained how she mixed the concrete at the Parker house in order to “submerge and conceal the remaining body parts belonging to the decedent in various totes.”
The victim’s arms, legs, and head were all placed in concrete mixtures and then taken to the red vehicle, the defendant allegedly confessed.
By 6:46 p.m. that night, Troncoso was in the Tom Green County Detention Center. She is being detained on a $2 million bond.
Earlier that same afternoon, the defendant’s father, Mario Valdes Troncoso Jr., 54, was arrested on one count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence for allegedly helping his daughter conceal the victim’s remains.
