Convicted Wisconsin killer Taylor Schabusiness described the murder, sexual assault and dismemberment of her former boyfriend in chilling detail during a jailhouse phone call.
Schabusiness is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of her former boyfriend, Shad Thyrion, after she admitted to decapitating, sexually assaulting, and dismembering him with a bread knife in 2022. The victim's mother discovered his severed head inside of a bucket in the basement beside his severed penis and a jolly rancher. His torso was later found in a separate storage tote, with organs and other limbs stuffed in a slow cooker and boxes in the back of a van.
The gruesome crime was motivated by a dispute over $50, Schabusiness told Law & Crime in a phone interview. She claims she paid $100 for a $50 bag of meth, but her ex-boyfriend Thyrion — who she says was a member of a rival gang — refused to give her change.
"I wasn't supposed to be doing business with my ex, but I did," she said. "He pocketed the money that I was supposed to have. So I went out and took his ass out for that."
After smoking meth, the two had a sexual encounter, where Schabusiness claims Thyrion suggested she use a choke chain dog collar to strangle him as foreplay.
"I asked him where my money at fool, and he said 'I ain't got it.' So I took a chain I put it around his neck and I asked him again," Schabusiness said. "He didn't respond. His face turned purple. There was blood coming out of his mouth."
She continued to recount the murder in a written statement, which Sierra Gillespie, host of the Law & Crime podcast, Scandal, said she read "like it was a poem."
"I laid his ass down on the bed to listen to his heartbeat and I said, 'Damn, this motherf---er is still beating,'" Schabusiness read. "I took off his pants. I sucked his d---, cut his head off at the same time... Then I chopped his d--- off."
Still reading, she explained how she attempted to conceal the crime.
"I used a nearby shower drain to pour out the blood and put it in bags and boxes around the basement to store the body parts in and plastic bags for the organs," she said, adding that she would stop to cover his body when people entered the basement, resuming the dismemberment when they left. "Then I headed out to the truck and I started loading up the body parts in there and then I went back to the apartment."
Since her conviction, Schabusiness has had an appeal denied. She pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect and maintains that she was "definitely insane." She did not express remorse for her crime, but claimed "any right-minded person" would have gone on the run, while she just returned to her apartment after the murder.
Twice during court appearances, Schabusiness has physically attacked her lawyers. Asked about the attacks, she said both lawyers set her off by requesting her mental state be reexamined. "He kept on saying you need more competency hearings... They constantly keep on saying that and I said, 'No, I'm straight. I'm straight.'"
Schabusiness was found by the court to be sane at the time of the murder. She was found guilty of first degree intentional homicide, third degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse.
With a life sentence ahead of her, Law & Crime producers asked if she'd imagined a different career for herself.
"I'd like to still be slanging my pu--y on the street," she said, "But you know, over here, it's all right."
