More than two dozen suspects have surrendered to Quanell X in the last five years, including the perpetrator of one of Texas' most sensational crimes of 2007 -- a jealous man who killed his former girlfriend, a Texas A&M student, and barbecued her in his backyard.
Investigators interrogated Timothy Wayne Shepherd for 10 hours and got nothing. The same day, a despondent Shepherd had a frank talk with Quanell X that brought the suspect to tears, and he confessed: He killed Tynesha Stewart in a fit of rage. Then he took Quanell X to the trash bin where he had dumped her remains, while news crews alerted by the activist filmed everything.
Quanell X's critics see his flair for flamboyance, and they write him off as a hustler who promotes himself at the expense of others.
A flashy man who's still obsessed with projecting a revolutionary mystique, he rolls around Houston in a white Range Rover with wide chrome rims, wears an enormous diamond-studded ring in the shape of a star and crescent, and travels with bodyguards dressed in dark fatigues and red berets who constantly scan the perimeter, hardly ever uttering a word.
"We certainly would not want to give him any more notoriety," Houston police spokesman Nathan McDuell said. "When Quanell is involved he notifies the media and makes himself out to be the central figure."
But in Houston's poor black neighborhoods, worlds far removed from the Italianate mansions and pricey boutiques that petroleum prosperity brought here, Quanell X is revered. Women stop him to say they want to have his baby. Elderly men roll down car windows and holler praise. One shouted, "Young brother, I love what you do!"
Quanell X may be a camera hog, many African Americans here say, but his rabble-rousing gets results. People like Garnier are convinced that Quanell X can accomplish more in a sound bite than they could in months of pleading to an indifferent bureaucracy -- though in that case, nothing came from the publicity and Garnier wound up filing a federal lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights.
"It takes a soldier, someone big, to get out of here without a scholarship to play sports," said Maurice Bailey Jr., 27, who snapped pictures of Quanell X when he saw him walking by. "It lets you know your brains don't have to be wasted out on the street."
--
