A Wisconsin woman convicted of murdering her lover and then sexually abusing and dismembering his corpse has been sentenced to life in prison without parole, a judge ruled on Tuesday.
Taylor Schabusiness, 25, strangled Shad Thyrion to death during a meth-fueled tryst in February 2022 in the basement of Thyrion’s mother’s Green Bay home.
She then severed his head and penis with kitchen knives, she admitted to investigators.
“The offense in this case can’t be overstated,” Brown County Circuit Judge Walsh said before delivering the sentence, according to the Green Bay Post-Gazette. “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.”
Schabusiness wore what appeared to be an apparent spit hood over her face at her Tuesday sentencing.
When Walsh asked her if there was anything she’d like to say, she replied “No, there isn’t.”
A jury found Schabusiness guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, third-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse after just 50 minutes of deliberation on July 26. They rejected her insanity plea deal the next day.
Michael Thyrion, Shad’s father, told Schabusiness that he forgave her for taking his son’s life in a shocking statement to the court ahead of the sentencing, according to the Post-Gazette.
“Taylor, I forgive you for what you did to my son … you made a bad choice,” he said. “I’m going to miss Shad. He was a wonderful child, too.”
“I believe everybody makes bad choices, maybe not to this scale,” he continued. “It does no good to hate you. I know you’ve got a heart, got a mind.”
In a disturbing interview with police after the killing, which was played to the jury during the trial, Schabusiness described how her lover’s head was the “first thing I took off” and that she was “very” excited about abusing his corpse.
“I was sucking and cutting at the same time,” the young mother admitted.
She confessed that she initially began choking her boyfriend as foreplay — but she “enjoyed it” and “wanted to see what would happen,” if she continued, Green Bay Police Department Detective David Graf testified.
After chopping off her boyfriend’s head, Graf claimed that Schabusiness said she cuddled his corpse.
“She described how she had sexual contact with the body in terms of playing with his penis. Also, she described that she had a dildo that she placed into his mouth … And that she had also cuddled the body,” the detective told jurors.
Thyrion’s mother discovered her son’s head in a bucket in the basement.
Schabusiness has a 2-year-old son that is in the process of being adopted by her grandma, who testified on her behalf, WBAY reported.
Her father Arturo Coronado, who is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting a child, also testified in court while wearing shackles and an orange jumpsuit.
In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.
