A Tennessee man said to be a Satanist who killed a woman and cut up and ate part of her body has been told he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Police were alerted after the man asked to borrow a neighbour’s digger to bury her remains.

Gregory Hale, from the town of Summitville, was sentenced to life without parole, after pleading guilty to killing his victim, Lisa Hyder. Mr Hale picked up Ms Hyder at an off-licence and took her to his home where he killed and dismembered her body.

The couple were married for six years before splitting last year. The mother of six had a longstanding problem with alcohol and refused to get treatment for her cancer. But Charles Hyder said no matter what she had done, he loved her.

“He told investigators that he fulfilled an obsession in wanting to kill a person and dismembering them,” Coffee County prosecutor Craig Northcott told Circuit Court Judge Craig Johnson this week, according to a report in the Tullahoma News. “He also admitted to eating part of her body.”

Lisa Hyder, a mother of six, struggled with alcohol problems (Facebook)

Reports said police who were alerted went to Hale’s home. Having obtained permission to search the property, police found discovered a burned torso with the hands, feet and head cut off. The body parts were found in buckets near a burn pit. Ms Hyder’s heart was found thrown into a neighbour’s garden.

Reports said that 36-year-old Ms Hyder suffered from problems with alcohol and had recently been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The year before she had split with her husband of six years.

The 37-year-old Hale was said to be known among his acquaintances as a devil worshiper and was reportedly fired from a meat processing plant after the owner caught him performing a satanic ritual. The owner said Hale would often take animal bones and eyeballs home with him.