Law&Crime Sidebar - 6 Most Shocking Pieces of Evidence in Taylor Schabusiness’ Gruesome Murder of Shad Thyrion

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Wisconsin woman Taylor Schabusiness was convicted of murdering, mutilating, and sexually assaulting her lover in his mother’s Green Bay home in 2022. Schabusiness strangled Shad Thyrion to death before cutting his head off, abusing his body, and further dismembering his remains. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy breaks down the six most shocking pieces of evidence in Schabusiness’ gruesome murder case with former forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Save 10% on your entire POM Pepper Spray order by using code LAWCRIME10 at https://bit.ly/3rkw6gnLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. So you just remember the body, too? Yeah. What do you do with the body parts? Oh, they're, um, they're animals. Someone? They're like, um, yeah. Basement upstairs down.

I was looking in the basement. I was going to bring it. And then I know I forgot the head. I wanted the head. That's Taylor Shibisness admitting to police that she choked Chad Theory onto death and then cut up his body. Did you want Cher to be dead?

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here on law and crime i'm ann jeanette levy a jury deliberated for just 45 minutes on wednesday no big shock there before finding taylor shibisness guilty of a gruesome crime the first degree homicide of shad thurion her friend first verdict reads as follows we the jury find the defendant Taylor Denise Shibisness guilty of first degree intentional homicide as charged in count one of the information dated this date July 26th, 2023 signed by the four person. Second verdict reads as follows. We the jury find the defendant Taylor Denise Shibisness guilty of mutilating a corpse as charged in count two of the information. Dated this date July 26th, 2023, signed by the four person. Shibisnes was also found guilty of gross abuse,

of a corpse for dismembering Therion and third-degree sexual assault. Therion was her friend, but Shibisnes told police in a recorded statement that the two had used meth, went back to his parents' house, and started having sex. Then Shibisnes said she began to choke Therion with a metal dog choker, and she liked it. So she ended up killing him. The details are graphic and disturbing. It's hard to believe that someone who actually cared about another person. could carry out this type of murder because it wasn't quick. It actually took some time.

Shibisness has pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, so this case really isn't about whether or not she committed the crime. It's pretty obvious she did, and that's why the jury deliberated for only 45 minutes. She essentially concedes that she killed him, but assert she didn't know right from wrong at the time that she did so, so she shouldn't be sent to prison. Instead, her attorney believes she should be sent to a mental health facility. Joining me to discuss some of the damning evidence in the case against Taylor-Shibisness is Joseph Scott Morgan. He is a forensic death investigator, also the host of the Body Baggs podcast. Joseph, welcome back to Sidebar.

Thanks for coming on. You bet. Anytime. Good to see you, Ingenet. Good to see you. First question, have you ever had a case where a body was dismembered? Yes, I have. But please understand, though it seems as though that we have more and more,

and it seems as though we actually do in the news, as a practitioner, as a former death investigator in New Orleans and Atlanta, I can probably count on one hand the number of dismemberment cases I had, you know, either total dismemberment or partial dismemberment. So it seems as though the volume of these is picking up. I cover a lot of these on body bags. But this case, involving should business, takes cake as far as I'm concerned. I don't remember anything in recent memory that was this horrific. I don't think people quite understand.

And I've said this on the air many times because I've, unfortunately, had to cover cases where people who were murdered were dismembered. It takes a lot of work to dismember a body and to destroy or attempt to destroy a body. It is not easy. No, it's not. And there's several elements that play into this and, you know, things that are required in order to, oh, this sounds horrible, effectively pull this off. First off, you need a kind of a sequestered location where you can do this alone. You need to have a certain level of knowledge, anatomical knowledge in particular. And you have to show up with the right tools. and in most cases that we cover on body bags in particular that are in the news, it seems as though people, it's almost like a flourish where they decide at the last moment that they're going to do this sort of thing and they grab whatever tools are handy. And of course, you know, that's, you know, in the medical legal world, when we go into the morgue,

there are dissections that we do. And we have the right tools. have very sharp scalples and saws and all those sorts of things. In a clinical setting, most of these people that engage in this behavior don't have access to those sorts of things. So you're left with things like hand tools that you'll get out of the garage. But in the Shibisness trial, you know, they even mentioned Antoinette a pocket knife that was utilized.

One of the detectives was on the stand and, of course, kitchen knives as well. How gruesome. Okay, so let's take a look at some of the testimony that we, heard in this case. This case, as you said, takes the cake. I think about it and I just can't even imagine talking about killing somebody who I described as my friend or best friend and doing it in this horrific fashion. So let's take a look at some of the testimony. This is from the mother of Shad Theron and she testifies about finding her own son's head in a bucket. When you heard the door slam, did you hear any other noises?

Not that I recall. After you saw what was in the bucket, what did you do next? I went back up to the second floor of the house and woke up Steve to have him verify that I saw what I saw what I saw. And what did Steve do? He got up and he went downstairs with me. He looked in the bucket, but he could not verify that it was what I thought it was. What did you and Steve do next? We went back upstairs to the second.

To the second floor. that's where our phones were plugged in and decided if we were calling 911 or the non-emergency number and that's when we called the audio we heard earlier is that the call that was made to law enforcement yes that was you and Steve yes After that point, did officers arrive? They did. Are you able to approximate, you know, the time you hear the storm doors slam to the time Steve and yourself call 911 about how long that is? Not really. I don't, time wasn't moving the same as it normally does after you notice that.

Joseph, you know, she didn't want to be on camera, understandably so. So we are just looking at Taylor Shibusiness as Shad's mother is testifying. But there had been some other testimony that they had seen Taylor and Shad enter the home, you know, in the hours before she found her son's head in a bucket. So this is pretty damning evidence. We know she confessed, but still she was down in the basement with Shat. Yeah, it is damning. And, you know, those time stamps revolving around videography are so very important. And it seems as though Internet just about every case that we cover nowadays, you know, it's going to involve some kind of electronic documentation, whether it be CCTV or phone, certainly, pinging and that sort of thing. But yeah, you know, to, when you think about what we just heard and the face, that's being put on this, you know, is you can't escape, escape her gaze, as it were. She's almost breaking the fourth wall there.

And there's something, you know, underlyingly evil about this. You know, what that mother experienced when she went down that staircase into the basement, she's just looking for her son. And she's triggered in her mind by thinking, you know, the sound of that, maybe that's him coming home or whatever the case might be. She's checking on him, you know, to go down to that down. downstairs bedroom. And I had a thought about this just a little while ago. And I think that a lot of the listeners can kind of identify with this. Do you ever have a moment in time where you're

traveling down the road in your car or maybe you're out in your yard or wherever it is? Maybe you're at home. You catch a glimpse of something. He said, wait, did I just see what I thought I saw? And you have to take a second look. And that goes to the verification process where she asked this gentleman to come down and verify it probably he's experiencing the same moment time and then she makes that interesting statement where she says she's trying to say she wants to call 911 or the non-emergency number because you know it's hard you want confirmation but you don't want confirmation as it were because it seems so very surreal notice how she stated that it seems like tom slowed down and i've had this actually occur with witnesses uh principles in cases

that I've interviewed where they said that everything else just kind of melted away in that environment. How much more so when your brain, you know, you're trying to confirm this in your brain, is this my son's decapitated remain that's sitting here in this bucket? It's really hard to get your brain to register that. But of course, you know, later on the police come out and they do in fact verify that. Most certainly. There was also evidence that police found, Green Bay police found this in Taylor's van. So let's take a look at that testimony. We process a vehicle that we had a warrant signed for. And do you recall what sort of vehicle it was? Yep. It was a town and country minivan. Remember the color? Gold. And at that point it had already been transferred to the Green Bay Police

Department facility? Yes. And what was your role, I guess, in process in the van? I was doing photographs again, so I photographed the van itself and then items of interest, areas of interest. Okay. And what are those exhibits? These are photographs of the back passenger driver's side of the minivan, which includes a crock pot box and a body part inside the crackpot box, and then the crock part box empty. are those photographs that you took yes do those appear to fairly and accurately depict the van as you encountered it on February 23rd of 2022 yes Joseph she's literally driving around with body parts in a van yeah how do you you know how I don't know how you make an excuse for that if your defense how do you explain that away well the most obvious thing is you're going to say that they're not in quote unquote in their right mind for whatever reason whether it's some kind

of psychological mythology that's going on or whether it's drug induced or whatever but the reality is this you have photographic evidence of the fact that these elements were contained in a van that she had you know ownership of and that is her her van it's very hard to escape you know when you know you've got these biological tiebacks and Compare that to what was found down in that basement. And there was that kind of, there was that statement that, you know, kind of rings in my ears about, about this case as she was being led away. And, you know, it was apparently she stated that, and I'm paraphrasing,

good luck finding everything. You know, just let that sink in just for a moment, you know, how callous you have to be. in order to say that about a fellow human being who you were involved, let's face it, in an intimate relationship with. It's, it, you know, it rises to a level of horror that not, that not many even in my field, in my field, in medical legal death investigation, encounter very often. This is kind of an outlier. Most certainly. Let's now look at the testimony of the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Shad Theeron.

Dr. I believe you mentioned essentially in the room the four main containers where human remains were located. Is that consistent with your recollection? That is correct. Within that room, yes. We've got the bucket, the blue bag on top of the dresser, the pink and gray bag on the floor, and then the tote. Are those the four locations where human remains were located in the room? That is correct. And can you just briefly describe the process that was used by the medical examiner's office to collect those remains?

Of course. These containers that contained the human remains were photographed as they were or as they sat in their location. We then documented the external appearance of the containers. After that, an evidence sheet was placed out on the floor to try to collect any trace evidence that might be present either on the bag or within any of the bag's contents. I then opened each of the bag, removed the contents, and laid them out on the evidence sheet for inspection. And can you describe for the jury's sort of big picture on a scene like this, which is I presume unusual, what sorts of things you are looking for attempting to ascertain as

you're walking through the room and finding remains in various locations? As I go through a room and evaluate the room, I'm looking for evidence of a disturbance, a struggle, or an altercation. I'm looking for signs of biological material which may tell me where a body part may be located. I'm also looking for evidence that may have contributed to the death. In other words, instruments, objects, weapons, evidence of drug paraphernalia. In this case, in particular, I'm also looking for places that a body may be concealed or that might be evidence of movement of a body from one location to another. Joseph, so body parts, he's examining the crime scene, just another piece of damning evidence.

And I think it shows intent here because she was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide. That is the title of the statute and the crime in Wisconsin. So it's not like you didn't mean to do this. Yeah, this doesn't just happen by accident. You don't have a body with all of its elements separated from one another. But I got to pause here just for a second and give a tip of cap to the medical examiner here on the stand. You're witnessing something that you don't commonly see. And we see on law and crime very frequently the testimony of forensic pathologists. And generally, their testimony comes, arises from what they're seeing. scene in the autopsy suite, okay? This is one of those rare times where you actually have a medical examiner that attends the scene. And that's very important in this case. And, you know, he talked about laying out these, these cloths and this sort of thing. And, you know, the pathologist is uniquely qualified to, let me just put it bluntly, to do an anatomical inventory. And that's really

what you have to do. People, you know, would cringe at that, but that's, that's what you're faced with in this kind of work and who better to have out there than somebody that is a skilled anatomist. And so, you know, you have these items that are in separate containers, you know, dispersed about the room. We're not even talking about what's in the vehicle, but just what's there. So you can take account of what you're seeing. And it's very hard to make heads and tails. And remember what I said earlier about when we're in the morgue, we're actually doing. We're actually doing things, if we're doing dissections, we're doing in a very clinical ordered matter manner. You're talking about something that's very frenzied, okay, in this particular case.

So when you can have someone like an expert like this physically at the scene and say, okay, this is what we're missing. You might be missing a digit off of an extremity or you might be missing an organ, which, you know, we do know in this particular case that this young man was literally eviscerated at the scene organ by organ. Now, keep in mind from these horrible kind of rudimentary incisions that she had made all about his body. So it's very important that we have the forensic pathologist there doing this work. I'm sure the police were very pleased to have them there because you can fall back,

you can look and say, hey, Doc, is there anything else that you can think of from a scientific perspective that we need to look for? And I also found it very compelling that he's looking for any kind of agent of injury that might be out there that could tie back to what happens. Let's look at some more testimony. This is from Officer Tim Kenney of the Green Bay Police Department. And he talks about the evidence he found on Taylor Shibisness herself. And did you have reason to assist Officer Russell with photographing some, an individual on that day? Yes.

Okay. And where did you respond to to take these photographs? I was at the Green Bay Police Department, and he took me to an interview room. Okay. And did Officer Russell have custody of an individual? Yes. And did you learn who that individual was? Yes. And who was that person? Taylor's to business.

Do you see that person in court today? I do. Could you point out where she's sitting for us? She's sitting at the defendant's table. And then what she's wearing? It looks like a black cover with her. a black and blue blouse. Okay. Thank you. I'd ask the record to reflect witness

identified the defendant. It will still reflect. And then what were you asked to do with respect to photographing Misha business? There were I guess cuts on her hands and blood on her clothing, which I was asked to photograph.

And did you document, I guess, the exterior clothing areas? Yes. Those were photographs that you took? Yes, they were. been marked with 82 for 86 osteolith your nose and question yes and what do you believe those to be

these would be the photographs that I took of her external clothing so Joseph she has blood on her clothing and cuts on her not unusual for somebody who's trying to dismember a body to cut themselves no no it's not

particularly with these kind of blunted blunted instruments that she's attempting to do to do this with and in in my opinion at least based upon the injuries that the forensic pathologist documented this is a very frenzied attack internet where you've got these kind of randomized injuries all over the body there's not really a an organized form and function here it's very randomized and so if if we take that that line of logic and apply it and say, well, she was in a frenzied state. Well, the instrument that you're using, it's very easy to have it slip in your hand and cut your hand.

And it doesn't necessarily, it's not indicative of a defensive injury, you know, that we think about where people are blocking things to try to prevent from being stabbed. It's not that type of thing. You can have these kind of little cuts. The big piece here, though, is the blood that's on there. If it is the victim's blood,

this is the potential remember if she's got blood on her hands she does this that's a transfer blood it's not like a dynamic spray that you might have for instance with high velocity blood spatter those sorts of things now this is this is transfer or dripping that sort of thing that's probably what they're documented the next clip we are going to view is very odd I don't know if it could get more strange with this case, but Taylor Shibusis was actually caught searching for and posing with a photo of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. And if people don't know who he is, he is a serial killer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who targeted young boys and men and dismembered them and had body parts in his refrigerator. Let's take a look. When you were reviewing the phone itself, the

extraction of the phone itself on March 2nd of 2022 did you note any searches related to Jeffrey Dahmer yes was there one was there more than one how many 24 total searches such things like Jeffrey Dahmer Jeff Boyardee Jeffrey Dahmer's but Jeffrey Dahmer walking into court all sexy is Louberto what is exhibit 102 This is a celebrate extraction report of the screenshots taken by forensic analyst Denelski. So this is a report from the device itself, is that correct? Correct. And does 102 depict the photographs of Dahmer that we had just discussed?

Yes. Does it also contain photographs of Ms. Chibisnes? Yes. What is she doing in the photographs that are depicted in that report? She's got a cell phone next to her head. There's a picture of Jeffrey Dahmer on the screen of the cell phone, and she's taken a selfie with it and smiling, like they're taking a selfie together. And what is the date of that photograph? That was February 12th, 2022.

So, Joseph, this is 10, 11 days before she kills Shad Theron and dismembers his body. Jeffrey Dahmer looking all sexy, and then, you know, internet searches, and she's posing. with a foot. I mean, if this case couldn't get any more ridiculous, this kind of is the cherry on top of the Sunday. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And, you know, this obsession that many people have with serial killers, they don't understand the reality of what many of us have faced at the scene that have worked worked in the wake of what they have done. I have friends that work at the Milwaukee County medical examiner's office during the height of what was going on with Jeffrey Dahmer. And it's absolutely horrific.

And the fact that she took an image of herself, superimposing herself into this world of Jeffrey Dahmer is chilling in and of itself. And what we can take away from that, and I guess perhaps being intimated by this, at least, was the fact that, you know, there's a connection here. Jeffrey Dahmer did, in a post-mortem state, take apart bodies. You know, that there's all kinds of photographic evidence of this from these crime scenes. And we've read reports and we've seen autopsy reports and all these sorts of things over the years about what he did. And I guess in a broader sense, you would want to ask yourself if she's attached in this manner where she feels comfortable with this.

This is something that she purposes to do. This wasn't an accident. Was she on some kind of learning curve using, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer as maybe a roadmap for what she wanted to achieve? And finally, really, probably the most damning piece of evidence in this case, the words of Taylor-Shibisness herself. We hear in the news sometimes about people confessing falsely, that is not the case. So let's listen to a little bit of the statement that she made to Green Bay Police Department detectives. And so where did you get the chains? He pulled it all in the pocket.

You pulled it off. You had two of them walking me over around. Can you describe them to me? Chain link. Chain link and silver. Silver? Okay. And what side with like a dog chain or a large lot petco chain?

You know what they're like that's big, um, you know, you know, and silver chains? Yes. And he had two. Yes. And what did you guys do with them? They put them around their necks. You did. And then what were you doing while they were around the necks?

I strangled. I was strangling me. so then after you realized he was no longer who he's dead just cases per fall and he said what's going on in his mouth um what you do um what you do clean him up a little bit sure and then um i just played with him like that i just played with him like that and he said played with on Maybe. Okay.

Okay. Okay. I'm talking about over the bed and then I'm stuck with the bed or what just or what? Okay. Didn't you have one, the bed? What kind of? Was there an actual debt or just a mattress or what? So then you have sex with him?

Yes. Okay. And I had a dildo. Okay. I played this one too. What did you do with the deal dog? And I just followed on my heart alone. What did you do with the deal?

I put it in his mouth, put it in a bag. Okay. Put it back. Okay, Joseph. So we have some pretty descriptive things there. She's just very matter of fact. I guess we should give her a little bit of credit for not trying to deny this. But her own words just paint this picture of somebody who did something, you know,

choking her friends with this met, her friend with this metal chain dog collar thing, choker probably. And then he's dead and she's playing with his body parts. Yeah. You know, so now we've entered into the round. of necrophilia and just when we thought that it couldn't get any darker it does and you know what progresses from there is the stuff of nightmares but it's important to understand what the detective said to her just then internet was the fact that he referenced back to say that

this young man shad his coloration had changed and that he had gone to purple and we see this very commonly in cases of asphyxiation. Now, it can be either suffocation, it can be oxygen deprivation, or it can actually be a ligature strangulation, a mechanical strangulation, for instance, where we have this chain wrapped around the neck, and there's more and more pressure, tension applied to this. And this was key for the medical examiner, because remember what I said earlier, we had this particulate body that was all over the place. They're trying to put these pieces together. And so what's revealed here is the fact that even in death, and even when they examine this

young man's head, it still had this kind of purple color. And I can tell you, if people at home want to know what it looks like, it's almost the same shade as an eggplant. Okay, it's that purple. It's lividious. So what this means is that as oxygen is being deprived, the blood is being backed up in the head. It can't flow. There's no return back to the heart and the lungs and that sort of thing. So it's building up. There were even patechiae that were noted by the medical examiner that gives you an indication of how much stress was being placed on his body when the life was literally being choked out of him with this choker, this chain. She used it to great effect in that sense. and his mortal remains still bore witness to actually what happened.

And so the doctor couldn't find anything else. One other very important thing here, and I think that it's something that we need to all consider is that there was literally no blood left in his body. Now, the average adult male has about a gallon and a half of blood in their body. There was nothing left. they had to do toxicology based upon what they could draw up out of that bucket that his head and his genitalia were found in it's absolutely horrifying i can't believe his family has to sit

and listen to this but as i said at least she didn't try to deny it she she confessed we see what the what the defense is here she's claiming that you know she's not guilty by mental you know disease or defect or what have you i don't know if the jury's going to buy it but we shall see because there it seems like there's were some deliberate actions here and she's trying to emulate potentially jeffrey dommer so uh joseph scott morgan thank you as always for your time we appreciate it and hope you'll come back soon to talk with us here on sidebar my pleasure thank you that's it for this edition of law and crime sidebar podcast you can listen to and download sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. And of course, you can

always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Anjanette Levy. We will see you next time. or Spotify.