A Wisconsin woman convicted of killing and dismembering a former boyfriend and scattering his body parts at various locations was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole.
A Brown County judge sentenced Taylor Schabusiness, 25, for the February 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, 24. A jury had convicted her in July of first-degree intentional homicide, third-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse.
Schabusiness had pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, but jury also found that she wasn’t mentally ill when she killed Thyrion.
Prosecutors said Thyrion and Schabusiness had smoked methamphetamine in the basement of Thyrion’s mother’s Green Bay home before Schabusiness strangled, decapitated and dismembered him. She then left parts of his body throughout the house and in a vehicle, authorities said.
Schabusiness was arrested on Feb. 23, 2022, after Thyrion’s mother called police to her house after she discovered her son’s head in a bucket in the basement.
Brown County Circuit Judge Thomas Walsh said Tuesday before announcing her sentence that “the offense in this case can’t be overstated,” the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.
“You seem to run out of superlatives. Where the victim’s remains are cut up? These actions are foreign. They shock the community; there aren’t really words for it,” he said.
Schabusiness’ defense attorney, Christopher Froelich, told the court she would speak on her own behalf before Walsh sentenced her, CBS affiliate WFRV-TV reported. But when the judge asked Schabusiness if there was anything she’d like to say, she replied simply, “No, there isn’t.”
“She’s not a monster,” Froelich told the court, adding that at age 25 there’s still time for his client to be rehabilitated, WBAY-TV reported.
The defense called several people to the stand, including Schabusiness’s grandmother, who is caring for Taylor’s 2-year-old child, Schabusiness’s father, who is serving time in prison, and a pharmacology expert, WFRV-TV reported.
Walsh told Schabusiness that “[She is] not responsible for where [she] came from, but [she has] to be responsible for where [she’s] going,” the station reported.
In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.
