A series of grotesque and lurid admissions by Taylor Schabusiness were shared with Wisconsin jurors during the third day of the admitted killer’s murder and necrophilia trial on Wednesday.
Shad Thyrion, 25, was killed and dismembered in his mother’s basement in February 2022. The state alleges the 25-year-old defendant took advantage of him during rough sex and choked him to death with a chain before later having sex with his corpse, otherwise violating the dead man’s body, and then cutting it into several pieces.
Over an hour’s worth of footage from Schabusiness’ interrogation was shown in a Brown County courtroom – culled from what prosecutors said was an interrogation that spanned some seven hours in total.
Content warning: The following details are exceedingly graphic – containing both extremely violent and sexual imagery.
“I hate this f–––––– outfit,” the defendant tells a detective.
In the footage, Schabusiness, wearing despised yellow coveralls, describes the incidents leading up to Thyrion’s death; recalling a day hanging out with a mutual friend, and smoking “ice” before going back to the basement of the victim’s mother’s house to have sex.
“I was riding him like a donkey,” she told a detective at one point – describing the foreplay with a dog choke-like collar that eventually turned deadly. “I just didn’t stop. I don’t know why. I didn’t stop.”
At several points, the interrogation meanders between subject matters. Schabusiness says she graduated from high school in 2016.
She tells a detective, in response to a series of questions about their relationship, that she and Thyrion dated for two or three years in high school and saw each other on occasion after high school.
“He’s my buddy,” she said – responding in the affirmative when asked whether the two had always been friends.
Eventually, the conversation is steered back to the day of Thyrion’s death by the Green Bay Police Department interrogator.
“We went and got some ice and then after that…we smoked..and then I did his hair,” the defendant tells one of two detectives.
Interrogators, at least in the footage shown to jurors, were particularly keen on recounting the sexual exploits between the defendant and the victim – both on the day of the crime and in a general sense.
“I like doing it to somebody else,” she said in response to a question about choking people during sex.
“He likes it,” she said shortly after that – in response to a question about whether Thyrion liked to be choked.
“I swear to God he was telling me, just, like: ‘Just do it,’ So, I’m like [inaudible] and I did it,” Schabusiness says. “I swear to God, I’m like I accidentally f—– up…that’s exactly what happened.”
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Another detective later asks the defendant: “So, he dies. He’s dead. And then you just kept playing with his body?”
She quickly nods in assent.
The discussion then moves on to the various forms of sexual conduct that occurred after the young man died. Detectives graphically ask – and the defendant graphically replies with blithe admissions – about the use of a dildo on the deceased. A detective asks about penetrative sex on herself after the killing. Schabusiness demurs.
“Did you say before that you performed oral on him?” another detective, seated mostly off-camera, asks.
“Yeah,” she replies, offering explicit details about the activity, and commenting, in a self-congratulatory way, about her sexual prowess.
It would be roughly two hours later before she cut her friend’s head off, she said, in response to a question.
Schabusiness went on to say that she repeatedly dozed off during the lengthy process of Thyrion’s dismemberment.
“When did you start, you know, cutting up his body?” the lead detective asks.
To which the defendant replies: “Oh, I don’t remember. I was sucking and cutting at the same time.”
At some point, Schabusiness goes on to say, she realized the sun had risen. Later and during the mutilation process, Thyrion’s mother opened the basement door to drop her cat inside. The defendant herself takes note of the surreal nature of a “kitty cat” down there “walking around” and meowing amidst the macabre and bloody scene.
“And I threw the kitty cat,” she adds.
Prosecutors have charged Schabusiness with murder in the first degree, mutilating a corpse, and sexual assault in the third degree. Prior to the start of her trial, Schabusiness had a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity entered by her former attorney – who was eventually allowed to quit the case after she attacked him in an infamous courtroom contretemps caught on camera.
In a defense motion, Schabusiness’ attorney argued that the sexual assault charge should be dropped because such a crime was factually and legally impossible due to Thyrion already being dead.
“What’d you do with the body?” the lead detective asks at one point during the interrogation footage shown to the jury.
“The body’s there,” she replies.
“Was his head still on?” the detective asks at another point.
Schabusiness replies nonchalantly: “That was the first thing I took off. I wanted the head.”
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