If you take a quick peek at violent crime rates from the United States for the past few decades, you’ll almost certainly notice something significant jumping out at you: from 2019 to 2020, the national homicide rate rose an estimated 30% in a single year, which was the largest jump recorded since 1905, 115 years ago. This alone is certainly unusual and noteworthy, but the increase is actually even more severe than it first sounds because the 1905 jump was not entirely organic; it resulted from many US states submitting their homicide rates to the national database for the first time, thus artificially inflating the numbers by mixing in older homicides. So, in reality, the 2020 jump was more than likely the largest in the country’s entire 248-year history.
However, that number gets even stranger when you zoom in and take a closer look at the less-talked-about specifics. You see, the 30% figure is the national average, but each state has its own statewide average, and the largest statewide increases did not necessarily come from the places you might expect. Yes, larger, more densely populated states like New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois saw their numbers rise between 38% and 47%—healthily outpacing most of the country—but the largest jumps came from Kentucky with 61%, Delaware with 62%, South Dakota with 81%, and Montana with a whopping 84%.
Researchers and data analysts are still trying to determine exactly why this happened, but many believe it was almost certainly pandemic related, which would make sense considering the uptick didn’t start until April of 2020. If you recall, that was around the time that schools were locking down, businesses were shuttering, and the job market was receding. Combine all that stress together with the persistent fear that you or one of your family members may contract this new and deadly virus, and it’s easy to understand how crime of all types would skyrocket, including homicides.
Lending further credit to this idea is the fact that these increased numbers did not stay high for very long; they started falling in 2023, and while the full figures for 2024 are not yet available at the time of writing, early estimates show that the national average has returned to its 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
Therefore, in hindsight, most agree that the drastic jump amounted to little more than a blip, but I’d argue that calling it a blip minimizes the substantial effect it had on the general public’s perception of safety. This is because it brought some of the most violent crimes seen in the past several decades to some of the smallest and normally safest communities in the country.
Today’s case falls within this category as it takes place within Green Bay, Wisconsin, an area that just barely qualifies as a medium-sized city. Where crime is concerned, it normally lives in the shadows of its more dangerous southward neighbors, Milwaukee and Chicago. But in 2022, all eyes were drawn north when the Green Bay police department stumbled into one of the most horrific and brutal murder scenes they had ever encountered. It was the result of a crime so barbaric that Brown County Judge Thomas Walsh would eventually say it “offends human decency.”
This is the tragic story of the slaying of Shad Thyrion.
Is That What I Think It Is?
The early morning hours of February 23rd, 2022 were cold and quiet. Outside, the streets and sidewalks were covered in a layer of fresh snow, and by 3:25am, few people were out and about—few people except the ice scrapers and officers from the Green Bay Police Department.
A half-hour or so earlier, everyone at the local dispatch office had been settling down for what they believed would be yet another boring night when a disturbing call came in:
“I’d like an officer at 829 Stony Brook. My friend just woke me up and swears that she found the severed head of her son in the basement…”
The caller that morning was Steve Hendrix, whose voice was both groggy and strained, and the friend he was referring to was his long-term girlfriend, Tara Packanick. Tara’s 25-year-old adult son, whom she asserted was dead, was Shad Thyrion.
Understandably, the operator’s first assumption upon hearing this claim was that Tara may have been mistaken. So, he asked Steve if he thought she might be hallucinating, if he thought she might be having a mental health crisis, but Steve made it clear he did not:
“I don’t think so. I went down there, and there’s something in the goddamn bucket, man.”
He then urged them to send someone over, and after gathering some more details, two officers, Officer Wanish and Officer Plonke, were dispatched to check things out.
Now, as I said in the intro, Green Bay is in no way known for its brutal homicides, and the small, yellow house with red shutters on Stoney Brook Ln appeared wholly unassuming from the outside. Not only were most of the lights off—save for those located toward the rear of the house, near the kitchen—but all the doors appeared to be shut and locked. The only indication that someone inside may be awake and waiting to receive the police was a single, exterior light illuminating a small side door.
As Wanish and Plonke approached this side door on foot, their boots crunching through the powdery white snow and ice below, they found Tara waiting for them. She was bundled up in a woolen jacket, ushering them inside and requesting they be as quiet as possible. The reason for this, she said, was because there were multiple other family members asleep inside the home at that time, and she was very concerned about them waking up and seeing something gruesome, as she just had. Wanish and Plonke then assured her that they would do their best, and she began filling them in on all the details:
Two days earlier, on Monday, Tara had picked Shad up from his father’s house across town and brought him to her home on Stoney Brooke Ln, where he planned to sleep over in the finished basement for the next several days. This basement, Tara said, was where he normally stayed because there was a bed and bathroom down there for him to use, and it was overall quite comfortable. However, Shad had not stayed at the home for very long Monday night because his longtime friend—a woman who Tara called Taylor Coranado—had stopped by to pick him up shortly after his arrival.
The pair were then gone for most of Monday, but they did arrive back at the home either sometime later that night or early Tuesday morning, while Tara herself was already in bed and asleep. Tara knew this, she said, for two reasons: she and Steve had both seen Taylor’s van parked in their driveway on Tuesday morning, and Tara had overheard Taylor speaking from the basement at one point that day. But, Tara said, she had not physically seen either of them since first picking Shad up on Monday.
So far everything was normal, but several hours later, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, just before the 9-1-1 call was placed at around 3am, Tara had overheard the sound of one of the home’s exterior doors opening and closing, followed by the sound of Taylor’s van starting up and driving away. This had prompted her to get out of bed and go down to the basement to see if Shad was still inside the home or if he had left with Taylor once again.
After descending the stairs, Tara said, she didn’t see anyone; however, she did notice something out of the ordinary sitting at her feet, just at the base of the stairs: a black, five-gallon bucket with a towel draped over it. Curious, she had bent down to lift the towel, and that was when she came face-to-face with Shad’s severed head bobbing up and down in a thick slurry of blood, organs, and other bodily fluids.
Not knowing what else to do, Tara had then run back upstairs, shaken Steve awake, and made him get up to go down and look in the bucket himself. After he returned, they then called the police together.
Still believing that Tara could be confused or possibly off her medication because the claim was so out of the ordinary, Officer Wanish asked Officer Plonke to wait with the couple upstairs as he made his way down to the basement to investigate himself. This basement was, as described, finished with wood paneling and a drop ceiling. It was also split into two rooms, and based on what could be seen in both, it was immediately clear to Wanish that the space was primarily used for storage.
To his left, there was a room that contained a washing machine and dryer, a water heater, and some shelving that was piled high. To his right, in the larger room where Shad normally stayed, the floor was cluttered with old chairs and furniture, a few scratched-up cat trees, some old lamps, and so on. There was also a Pacman machine sitting on a table in the center of the room and, at the very rear of the room, the old bed that Tara said Shad normally slept on.
Of course, Wanish paid little attention to all this because his focus was centered around the item sitting right at the bottom of the staircase: the bucket.
Just as Tara had done thirty minutes or so earlier, he then bent down and removed the towel, calmly shining his flashlight inside. Then he jumped back and quietly called for Officer Plonke. When Plonke arrived at the bottom of the staircase, Wanish asked:
“That’s real, right?”
Officer Plonke, who wasn’t even two years out of the police academy, went pale and confirmed that it was.
Officer Wanish then pulled out his walkie talkie and began speaking in a hushed tone, so as not to disturb anyone upstairs. He requested backup as Plonke made his way up the stairs again to check on Steve and Tara, who were then sitting in chairs inside the kitchen.
While waiting for more officers and a supervisor to arrive, Officer Wanish began poking around the basement further, shining his flashlight around to make sure nobody was hiding in one of the ill-lit corners. Everything around him looked disheveled, but mostly ordinary—except for Shad’s bed. When Wanish’s light hit the mattress and pillow, he reached for his radio once again:
“If we could get more units sooner rather than later that would be appreciated. We’ve got quite a bit of blood down here…”
A House of Horrors
Over the next several hours, after the home’s occupants were all dragged from their beds and ushered out into the frigid night, a forensics team arrived to begin what would become a multi-hour, exhaustive search that would unearth gruesome discovery after gruesome discovery.
Obviously, the first question on everyone’s mind was “where is Shad’s body?” However, the answer they found was not for those with weak stomachs as it appeared whoever had killed and decapitated him had also gone to great lengths to dismember and hide the rest of his body all throughout the basement.
There were pieces of him everywhere: his torso was found inside a tote box alongside one of his dismembered feet; his intestines had been removed from that torso and were then stuffed into plastic bags and hidden inside nearby cardboard boxes; his limbs were thrown into corners and hacked-off chunks of his flesh were swept underneath the furniture.
Everywhere police looked, they found more of Shad—including at the bottom of the black bucket. Below his head, they discovered his severed genitals and two kitchen knives. These were the instruments used to dismember him, and their blades were whittled down and dulled from use.
Because the murder had happened fairly recently, the smell of decomposition had not yet engulfed the small, enclosed space, which is why neither Wanish nor Plonke had noticed it upon first descending the stairs, but now that everything was being moved around and disturbed, the air quickly turned heavy and sickly.
At the same time that this was all happening, a league of officers had surrounded the home and were beginning to put together a short list of suspects. At the very top of that list was the woman Tara referred to as Taylor Coronado, because she was the last person Shad had been seen with.
As it turns out, Taylor was already known to the Green Bay police department because she had been arrested multiple times over the past few years for various smaller crimes. However, the name the police had in their database was slightly different: Taylor Schabusiness.
About an hour and a half later, as the forensic team was still sifting through and cataloging everything already mentioned in the basement, other officers were venturing out to Schabusiness’s apartment. There, they immediately found her van parked in the parking lot in front of her unit. They began shining their lights into its windows, but they couldn’t see much.
They then proceeded around the front fender, to the front of the car, and that’s when one of the officers looked down and saw what appeared to be bloody footprints in the snow. He leaned down, shining his light onto them, and asked his partner if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
They were not.
Those footprints in the snow were real, and they led directly from the driver door to the apartment building’s entrance. When officers then shined their light toward that entrance, they saw Schabusiness emerge from her unit and begin walking toward them.
At first, she didn’t notice them, but she stopped dead in her tracks the moment she did, opting instead to simply wait and stare at them. The officers decided to approach her.
Standing at only 5’3” (1.6m), Mrs. Schabusiness didn’t look all that dangerous. She had brown eyes and black hair and was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, black sweatpants, sneakers, and a flat-brim cap with her name embroidered on it. But as the officers got closer, they started to notice the blood smeared on the front of her clothes and hands. Some of that blood appeared to have come from a large open wound on her thumb.
After a quick, gloved pat down, one of the officers asked Schabusiness if she knew why they were there, to which she replied:
“…because of a warrant for my arrest?”
Very quickly, Taylor was then placed inside a squad car so that the police could begin searching the inside of her van. It took them almost no time at all to locate even more evidence: Shad’s other foot sitting inside a crockpot.
None Schabusiness
Mrs. Taylor Schabusiness, born Taylor Denise Coronado in Evanston, Illinois in 1997, had experienced a very difficult and unstable life up until the time of her most recent arrest. She had first moved to Green Bay with her father, Arturo Coronado, her mother, Marla, and her brother, Arturo Jr., in 2008, when she was then only 11 years old. Arturo Sr., who went by Art, had found work in the city and planned to make Green Bay their family’s permanent home, but his plans would be uprooted less than a year later when tragedy struck.
Marla, you see, was and had been an alcoholic for the majority of Taylor’s young life, which had led to her developing cirrhosis of the liver and passing away in 2009 at the age of 41. After this, 12-year-old Taylor was temporarily separated from her immediate family when she was shipped away to live with Art’s parents in Cotulla, Texas. Art did this because he didn’t feel capable of raising Taylor on his own; however, the arrangement didn’t work out in the long run, and Taylor had to be returned to Green Bay after she began displaying the early signs of serious mental health issues and having behavioral problems at her Texas school.
Unfortunately, those problems persisted when both she and Arturo Jr., who went by AJ, were enrolled at Bayview Middle School and Bayport High School in Green Bay, the latter of which being where Taylor would eventually meet the victim in today’s episode, Shad Thyrion.
According to Taylor’s family, Taylor struggled in school, but Shad was a good friend to her. They were reportedly very close, and he was a good influence on her. He had three siblings himself and liked playing video games, camping outdoors, and woodcarving. He was also driven to become an artist, which drew Taylor to him because she herself also had artistic inclinations.
At one point—or possibly several points, reports vary—they dated, but even their relationship wasn’t enough to pull her out of the downward spiral she was quickly tumbling into.
Upon graduating, Taylor’s mental health issues worsened, and she was forced to receive psychiatric help at both Prevea Health and Bellin Heath in the Green Bay area. She was also once under a civil commitment order at the Nicolet Psychiatric Center and ordered to take anti-psychotic medication at one time. This reportedly helped her substantially, but the medicine stopped once she was released, at which time she claims to have started suffering from intense hallucinations.
Unfortunately, the exact reason for this continued mental decline is unknown, but part of it may have resulted from what else was happening within her family home at the time. You see, after Marla passed away in 2009, Art remarried a woman who had a daughter from a previous marriage, a daughter who Art would repeatedly molest throughout the subsequent years. In 2018, the girl told her mother what had happened and, understandably, the Coronado family collapsed in an instant. Art was then arrested and charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child, for which he would eventually plead “no contest” and be sentenced to 12 years in prison followed by 18 years of extended supervision, a total of 30 years.
To be completely clear, what I am about to say is purely speculation because it is not known if either Taylor or AJ were ever abused by Art growing up, but, if they were, it would almost certainly explain Taylor’s persistent mental health and behavioral issues. It could also offer some insight into Marla’s rampant alcoholism—if she knew about and chose to ignore the abuse, of course. Once again, that is purely speculation on my part based on what has been reported about this very dysfunctional family. Taylor has never publicly claimed to have been abused by her father, and unfortunately AJ passed away in a motorcycle accident in 2022.
Either way, as Taylor attempted to enter the workforce as an adult, she got a job as a cashier and cook at Big Beef City and, later, worked as a 3rd shift line operator in the Saputo cheese factory. This allowed her to begin building a better life for the first time; however, it’s also when her criminal activity would truly begin.
While working in the cheese factory, Taylor met and began dating a man named Warren Schabow. Schabow was also known to police because he was a medium-level meth dealer in the area who had been arrested multiple times throughout his life. As a youth, he had gotten involved with the local drug trade via marijuana, and after high school, he was arrested for possession of THC, possession of drug paraphernalia, and resisting arrest. For this, he had been sent to a drug rehabilitation program, which had failed to help him.
Then, in 2012, he had been rearrested for armed burglary after breaking into a residence and stealing a laptop and several firearms. For this, he ended up pleading no contest while stating he had taken twenty-five 1mg Xanex tablets directly before the robbery and was “out of his mind” during it.
Given that Schabow was a repeat offender by this point, he had been given a harsh punishment of five years’ incarceration for the armed burglary charge and a total of six years for the two theft counts. This was, as stated, an anomalously heavy sentence, especially considering all his time was ordered to be served consecutively—i.e., in a row, not at the same time.
Interestingly, that last part had been done against the state’s recommendation because the judge felt that letting Schabow out after only a couple years would be far too lenient. Schabow attempted to appeal this decision multiple times in the following years, stating that he had been misled by the prosecution and his own attorneys into thinking the sentences would be concurrent, but every appeal had failed. He was incarcerated until at least 2016 or 2017 after which time he met Taylor while on parole.
According to the Coranado family, Schabow introduced Taylor to the criminal underworld and got her hooked on hard drugs, primarily methamphetamine, which only served to worsen her mental health issues. Very soon, she began committing crimes herself alongside Warren, such as fleeing from the police and obstructing a police officer during an investigation.
Still, despite this, Warren and Taylor seemed to be head over heels in love with one another. After just a few months of dating, they got each other’s names tattooed on their necks, and on February 14, 2020, they married, at which time Taylor Coronado legally changed her name to Taylor Schabusiness.
If you’re wondering why, I assume it’s because Schabusiness is what Warren Schabow referred to himself as on the street. He reportedly came up with this name by taking the “Scha-” from Schabow and tacking “business,” onto the end of it… because he was a businessman, you see.
Another theory is that Schabusiness sounds a bit like “ya’ business,” when saying “none Schabusiness.”
Either way, Mrs. Schabusiness then began making and selling dreamcatchers on Facebook until she got pregnant. Thankfully, after his birth, little Mateo would be given the surname Coranado and sent away to live with Art’s parents in Texas, as Taylor herself had once been a decade earlier. I say thankfully because Taylor and Warren’s life together was about to get a whole lot more complicated in the coming months.
On November 13th, 2020, officers from the Ashwaubenon Police department in Green Bay discovered approximately 46 grams of methamphetamine inside a car during a routine traffic stop. Warren Schabow was present inside the car that night, although it is not clear if he was driving. What is clear, however, is that another occupant of the vehicle told police that the meth belonged to Schabow, and because anything over 5 grams is considered a felony in Wisconsin, police were then able to obtain a warrant for Schabow’s cellphone records, which revealed much.
As alleged in a criminal complaint filed on May 7th, 2021, Schabow and four other people had been acting as drug dealers for a woman named Brittany Vlach. Vlach was a known drug trafficker who would often buy large amounts of methamphetamine from a source in Minneapolis to distribute to smaller dealers in the Green Bay area. In a single two-month period, she had made 16 separate runs between Minneapolis and Green Bay, oftentimes picking up a pound at a time, which made her and her dealers all major players in East Green Bay’s drug problem.
Because of his close ties to Vlach, Schabow was originally accused of conspiring to distribute over 500 grams of methamphetamine, which could have put him away for over a decade when considering his past convictions. But he ultimately agreed to take a plea deal for the reduced charge of “knowingly and intentionally possessing with the intent to distribute a mixture and substance containing a detectable amount of methamphetamine.”
For this reason, he had been in either jail or prison since 2020, leaving his new wife, Mrs. Schabusiness, all alone on the outside. Very soon, she would reconnect and begin hooking up with her old high-school fling, Shad Thyrion.
Drugs Are Bad, M’kay?
Now, given that we spent a sizable portion of that last section talking about Warren Schabow, you might be speculating that he was involved in Shad’s death in some way. You might think he learned about Shad and Schabusiness’s rekindled relationship and arranged to have him killed. Or you might even think that Schabusiness decided to kill him herself to prevent Schabow from discovering her infidelity once he was eventually released from prison in just a few years. However, as Detective Graff of the Green Bay PD eventually discovered, you would be wrong on all counts.
While sitting inside an interrogation room the morning after Shad’s body was discovered, Schabusiness began calmly explaining exactly what had happened, filling in many of the time gaps in Tara’s original story: she had picked Shad up from Tara’s home at around 9:30pm Monday night and driven him to a mutual friend’s apartment. While there, all three had smoked marijuana together, before that friend left to go run an errand. While that friend was gone, she and Shad then smoked meth and injected Trazodone, an antidepressant and sleep aid that is often paired with meth to reduce certain negative effects of its high. As someone on Reddit claims, “it reduces the jitters,” and I’m willing to take his word for it.
After this, both she and Shad then returned to Tara’s basement, where they continued to smoke more meth. How much meth? Well, while I don’t believe she gave Graff an exact amount during the initial interview, she would later claim it was at least “51 hits,” which is an unbelievably high amount.
After this, Schabusiness said she and Shad decided to engage in consensual intercourse. This was something they had been doing off and on for years, she said, and they often experimented with BDSM during their sessions, particularly choking one another with chains. This time, it was Schabusiness choking Shad, but she couldn’t remember anything after climbing on top of him. Everything, she said, was a blur caused by the meth, which she referred to as “that bitch.”
When Detective Graff pushed her to explain how Shad had ended up dead, she replied:
“That is a good question.”
When he informed her of what they had discovered, how his body had been completely ripped apart, she said:
“That’s pretty fucked up.”
Now, had Schabusiness left her story there, she wouldn’t have necessarily been in a good position from an evidence standpoint, but at least her future lawyers might have been able to squeeze out some sort of viable defense—but she didn’t. After some more probing from Graff, she began to tell the rest of the story, which was so sickening it made the normally hardened detective’s skin crawl.
According to Schabusiness, while Shad lay face down on his own bed, she climbed onto his back and began choking him using the chain. She wrapped it around his neck and pulled very hard, to the point that he began coughing up blood and turning purple. She saw this, she admitted, but didn’t let up, instead tightening the chain even more. This was well past what they normally did to one another, and Shad was struggling to free himself, but Schabusiness said she was enjoying herself so much that she couldn’t stop, and after several more minutes of keeping him teetering on the edge of blacking out, he died—however, this was only the beginning.
Horrifically, Schabusiness said, she then spent several hours having necrophiliac sex with his corpse while his mother was upstairs inside the home. She violated him using sex toys, and Tara never came down to check on them because she wasn’t aware that anything was happening right under her nose. The reason she had heard Taylor speaking that afternoon and not Shad was because he was already dead.
After this she then ventured upstairs to grab several knives from the kitchen, positioned Shad’s body near the edge of the bed so that his head was dangling limply off the side, lifted it, and began to cut. She used the black bucket to catch his blood and, when it eventually fell off, his head.
I won’t get into the more gruesome details of what else she did with the rest of his body but be aware that the only appropriate word is “butchered.” Simply put, she crudely dismembered him at the joints and scattered his various parts all throughout the basement in a vain attempt to “hide them.” Because she was so “out of her mind” on meth, she thought this plan would work.
After this, she then climbed into the basement shower to wash up and, while there, claimed to have poured some of his blood over her body in celebration. Then she took Shad’s foot to her van, stashed it in the crockpot, and drove away, which woke Tara up.
When asked why she had done all this, Schabusiness replied by asking the detective if he had ever:
“…loved something so much he would kill it.”
She then teased that Graff would:
“…have fun finding all the organs.”
Schabusiness was then charged with the following: first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse, and third-degree sexual assault.
Please Sit Down, Mrs. Schabusiness
As we talked about in the intro, it’s obvious that people went a little crazy during the pandemic, but what I failed to mention is that this trend actually extended into courtrooms across the country during that time as well. In just a few years, there were multiple instances of high-profile outbursts and disruptive shenanigans in courtrooms that drew the media’s attention. You might recall when three-time felon Deobra Redden physically leapt at Las Vegas Judge Mary Kay Holthus.
You might also recall when Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow was forced to put up with the consistent antics of Darell Brooks as he attempted to defend himself against the 76 charges that resulted from the Waukesha Christmas parade attack. And, of course, you might also remember Sarah Boone. Well, Mrs.
Schabusiness joined their unenviable ranks on Valentine’s Day 2023 while she was waiting for her own trial to begin.
While sitting before Judge Thomas Walsh, Schabusiness’s attorney, Quinn Jolly, requested a delay in her trial. He was hoping to buy time for her to receive a psychiatric evaluation. It was all ordinary, mundane stuff on the docket—until Schabusiness suddenly lunged toward Jolly, elbowing him in the face. With her hands shackled, she then began beating him with her chains until the bailiff was able to force her to the ground.
Over the next few minutes, as the courtroom was being evacuated, Schabusiness wrestled with multiple deputies. She kicked, scratched, and bit at them as they struggled to subdue her. Footage of this attack is available online, and it honestly looks like they are wrestling with a rabid animal.
After the deputies managed to get control of her and she calmed down a bit, Schabusiness began to ask what had happened, indicating she had been in a fugue state during the attack. The deputies told her:
“You went crazy and attacked your own lawyer.”
Roughly ten minutes after the attack, once Schabusiness had been removed from the courtroom, Jolly requested to be removed from Schabusiness’s case. Judge Walsh granted his request.
The next time Schabusiness was in court, she appeared with even more chains around her body and a Hannibal-Lector-esque spit guard over her face.
Schabusiness’s new attorney, Christopher Froelich, was then assigned to her, and he requested two things: that the trial be pushed back so Schabusiness could undergo the psychiatric evaluation Jolly had requested, and that Judge Walsh recuse himself from the trial because, in Froelich’s opinion, Walsh could no longer remain impartial after witnessing the outburst firsthand.
In response, Walsh permitted the evaluation, but he refused to push the trial date, stating it would begin as scheduled on July 24th, 2023. He also refused to recuse himself.
Inside the Brown County jail, Schabusiness met with forensic psychologist Diane Lytton, but their time together did not go as planned. As Lytton would later testify before Judge Walsh, Schabusiness refused to speak with her about the specifics of her case and, when pressed for more information, hurled a chair at her.
At Schabusiness and Lytton’s second meeting—yes, there was a second meeting—things went a bit smoother, and Lytton determined that Schabusiness was suffering from “command hallucinations” that ordered her to hurt herself and other people. She was also found to be in very different mental states from day to day. Some days, she would be perfectly lucid and able to carry on a half-decent conversation, but other days she would appear wild, temperamental, and unintelligible. As such, Lytton determined that Schabusiness was not able to participate in her own defense and could not control her actions in court, thus she could not be considered competent to stand trial.
This, obviously, was a huge win for the defense, but Judge Walsh was not so sure. He believed that Schabusiness was merely attempting to circumvent the law by playing up her mental health issues. The reason for this belief stems from something we’ve yet to discuss:
You see, on top of everything else the police had discovered the night Schabusiness was arrested, they also found many disturbing searches on her cellphone, including some related to the Ku Klux Klan, blow up dolls with customized faces, and satanism, the latter of which led some people to believe Shad had been sacrificed as part of a satanic ritual. I don’t know if that part is true or not, but it doesn’t really matter because the most relevant information learned from those searches was that Taylor appeared to have been planning to kill someone for a very long time. Shad’s death wasn’t something that resulted solely from drug use, he may have just been the easiest target.
Disturbingly, Schabusiness also showed an intense fascination with Wisconsin-native Jeffrey Dahmer, at one time telling officers they “had a thing” together. It’s unclear what she meant by this considering Dahmer was killed 3 years before she was born, but police did find several uncomfortable searches related to him on her cellphone, including “Jeffrey Dahmer walking into court all sexy” and “Jeffrey Dahmer’s butt.”
This all gets even more concerning when you remember that Dahmer ate parts of his victims and Shad’s foot was found in a crockpot; however, there is no proof that Schabusiness actually ate any part of him.
Because of all this uncertainty, a state-appointed psychologist, Matthew Seipel, was called in, and he would later testify that Schabusiness was competent to stand trial:
“While certain behaviors certainly are disruptive and concerning, I found no evidence to suggest that there was a consistent pattern of such behaviors that could be directly attributed to symptoms of a mental illness. Rather, I am fundamentally unable to rule out that they’re primarily volitional in nature.”
As such, it was determined that Schabusiness would go to trial as scheduled—and that trial would be very quick.
In front of a jury, Froelich argued that Schabusiness was not in control of her actions, while the prosecution argued the opposite. It was all very standard stuff, and the most notable things that happened all concerned Schabusiness’s strange behavior throughout the proceedings. She sat there behind the defense table, rocking side to side in her chair and occasionally laughing when the gorier details of the crime were brought up, such as when the jury was shown a picture of Shad’s head in the bucket.
At several points, she also repeatedly stopped what she was doing to stare into the camera momentarily, as if she were Jim from The Office. Sometimes, she would turn and wink at the audience flirtatiously.
The jury returned their verdict after only a single hour of deliberation: guilty.
Shit-Business
At her sentencing, it was fairly clear that Schabusiness would be receiving life, so there was only one question to really consider: should she eventually be offered parole?
Her father, Art, was present in the courtroom to assert that she should. He wore his prison jumpsuit and a set of leg irons as he addressed the court, claiming that his daughter was “not the monster she’s made out to be in the media.” He blamed drugs as the primary cause of her crimes and asked for leniency. He also claimed that the system had failed her, that the mental health facilities that released her were to blame for what had happened to Shad.
As he spoke on the stand, Schabusiness mouthed “I love you,” multiple times. She also whispered, “Go Bears!” (a Chicago-based football team) as he was being led out of the courtroom following the conclusion of his statement.
Shad’s uncle, Kelly Thyrion, had harsher words for her:
“There’s no excuse for [what you did]. I don’t care if it’s drugs or upbringing. We all go through hard times growing up—at least the majority of us have—and you had the opportunity to change that. You had the opportunity to see you have a problem…”
This was, in my opinion, very well said—but he also took the time to insult her in front of the entire courtroom:
“To make other people suffer because you were suffering is pretty shitty. So that name, Taylor Shit-business, fits you well. I’m not a praying man, but after Judge Walsh sentences you here today, I will pray that you meet the same fate as your idealistic Jeffrey Dahmer. So, have a great life, Shit-business.”
The courtroom then literally cheered and applauded.
Judge Walsh, who had been keeping a close eye on Schabusiness’s behavior the entire trial, was also not swayed by Art’s request for leniency and took great offense at his assertion that it was somehow the government’s job to solve Schabusiness’s problems for her:
“You are not responsible for where you come from, but you have to be responsible for where you’re going…”
He also found it funny that a man in jail for statutory rape would come to court to claim someone else was “not a monster.”
Of the severity of Schabusiness’s crime, he said:
“The offense in this case can’t be overstated… you seem to run out of superlatives in describing what happened… This crime offends human decency, it offends human dignity, it offends the human community. It really does.”
He ruled that Schabusiness would never be eligible for parole.
Schabusiness as Usual
As documented by media outlets at the time of her trial, many people speculated that Schabusiness’s behavior within Judge Walsh’s courtroom would be a good indicator of how she would behave in prison, and now that a few years have passed, we can say for certain that they were correct.
At approximately 7:43PM on July 24, 2024, Schabusiness requested to be taken to the medical ward inside Taycheedah Correctional Institution because of a staple that was lodged in her arm and causing her pain.
Because she was already known to be a problem for the staff, an officer first attempted to bring a nurse to her so she wouldn’t have to be removed from her cell. However, when the nurse saw the staple, she said Schabusiness needed to be taken to medical for a proper assessment. At this point, Schabusiness reportedly started laughing quietly to herself, prompting the officer to ask her what was so funny. She then mumbled something unintelligible as they proceeded down the hallway.
A few minutes later, inside an examination room, Schabusiness was asked to take a seat on an examination table. The nurse then grabbed and sterilized a pair of tweezers and began removing the staple, but as soon as the tweezers made contact, Schabusiness screamed, grabbed the nurse by the arm, and shoved her away. She then jumped down off the table and began attacking her wildly, as she had done to her defense attorney the prior year.
Seeing this, the officer grabbed Schabusiness and shoved her against a wall, attempting to subdue her, but she continued to resist. She then also picked up a small table and lobbed it at the officer, which prompted one of the prison’s sergeants, who had come running at the sound of a struggle, to unload his pepper spray into her eyes. This effectively ended the struggle and left them all coughing.
In the end, Schabusiness walked away with a bump on her head, several bruised ribs, a sore arm, and the staple still intact. She was then taken to the local hospital for treatment, where I’m sure the staff were thrilled to have to deal with her. She was then charged with “battery by prisoner,” a class H felony, and is facing up to an extra decade behind bars, though that won’t change much.
Truthfully, it’s not known what caused this outburst, but I did notice it occurred exactly one year to the day after her original trial’s start date.
Key Takeaways
- The 2020 national homicide rate jumped 30%, likely the largest single-year increase in U.S. history, with smaller states like Montana and South Dakota seeing even steeper rises.
- Taylor Schabusiness murdered and dismembered her former high school friend Shad Thyrion in his mother’s Green Bay basement in February 2022 after consuming methamphetamine together.
- Schabusiness had a history of severe mental health issues, was introduced to meth by her husband Warren Schabow, and showed premeditation through disturbing phone searches including fascination with Jeffrey Dahmer.
- She was found competent to stand trial despite violent courtroom outbursts, convicted in one hour, and sentenced to life without parole by Judge Walsh, who called the crime an offense to human decency.
- In July 2024, Schabusiness attacked a prison nurse and officer during a medical visit, earning additional felony charges and demonstrating continued violent behavior behind bars.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the national homicide rate increase from 2019 to 2020, and why was it historically significant?
The national homicide rate rose an estimated 30% in a single year from 2019 to 2020, which was the largest jump recorded since 1905 (115 years prior). However, the 1905 jump was artificially inflated because many US states submitted their homicide rates to the national database for the first time, mixing in older homicides. Therefore, the 2020 jump was more than likely the largest in the country’s entire 248-year history.
Which states saw the largest increases in homicide rates during the 2020 spike, and how did they compare to larger states?
While larger, more densely populated states like New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois saw their numbers rise between 38% and 47%, the largest jumps came from Kentucky with 61%, Delaware with 62%, South Dakota with 81%, and Montana with 84%.
When and how was Shad Thyrion’s body discovered?
On February 23, 2022, at around 3:25am, Tara Packanick discovered her son Shad Thyrion’s severed head in a black five-gallon bucket at the base of the basement stairs in her home on Stoney Brook Ln in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The bucket contained his head bobbing in a thick slurry of blood, organs, and other bodily fluids. She had gone to check on him after hearing Taylor Schabusiness’s van leave.
What gruesome discoveries did police make while searching the basement?
Police found Shad’s torso inside a tote box alongside one dismembered foot; his intestines removed from the torso and stuffed into plastic bags inside cardboard boxes; his limbs thrown into corners; hacked-off chunks of flesh swept underneath furniture; and at the bottom of the black bucket below his head, his severed genitals and two kitchen knives used for dismemberment. His other foot was later found in a crockpot in Schabusiness’s van.
What was Taylor Schabusiness’s explanation for killing Shad Thyrion?
Schabusiness claimed she and Shad had smoked meth and engaged in consensual BDSM sex involving choking with chains. She said she climbed on top of him, wrapped a chain around his neck, and pulled very hard until he coughed up blood and turned purple. She admitted seeing this but tightened the chain more because she was enjoying herself, and after several more minutes he died. She then spent several hours having necrophiliac sex with his corpse and later dismembered him.
What charges was Taylor Schabusiness facing, and what was her sentence?
Schabusiness was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse, and third-degree sexual assault. She was found guilty by a jury after only one hour of deliberation. Judge Thomas Walsh sentenced her to life in prison with no possibility of parole, stating the crime ‘offends human decency.‘
What violent incident occurred in the courtroom on Valentine’s Day 2023?
While waiting for her trial to begin, Schabusiness suddenly lunged toward her attorney Quinn Jolly, elbowing him in the face. With her hands shackled, she then beat him with her chains until the bailiff forced her to the ground. She then wrestled with multiple deputies, kicking, scratching, and biting them. She later appeared to be in a fugue state, asking what had happened.
What was the disagreement between psychologists about Schabusiness’s competency to stand trial?
Forensic psychologist Diane Lytton determined Schabusiness was suffering from ‘command hallucinations,’ was in very different mental states from day to day, and was not competent to stand trial. However, state-appointed psychologist Matthew Seipel testified that while her behaviors were disruptive and concerning, he found no consistent pattern attributable to mental illness symptoms and could not rule out that they were ‘primarily volitional in nature,’ concluding she was competent to stand trial.
What disturbing searches were found on Schabusiness’s cellphone?
Police found searches related to the Ku Klux Klan, blow up dolls with customized faces, satanism, and an intense fascination with Jeffrey Dahmer including ‘Jeffrey Dahmer walking into court all sexy’ and ‘Jeffrey Dahmer’s butt.’ These searches suggested she had been planning to kill someone for a long time.
What incident occurred at Taycheedah Correctional Institution on July 24, 2024?
Exactly one year after her trial’s start date, Schabusiness was taken to the medical ward for a staple in her arm. When a nurse attempted to remove it with tweezers, Schabusiness screamed, grabbed the nurse’s arm, shoved her away, jumped off the table, and attacked her. She then threw a small table at an officer before being subdued with pepper spray by a sergeant. She was charged with ‘battery by prisoner,’ a class H felony.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Brutal Slaying of Shad Thyrion…
- Hero image source by IAEA Imagebank / openverse, by.
