Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and on this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, we’re diving into a crime so gruesome it shocked even seasoned investigators.
Taylor Schabusiness, 25, was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and third-degree sexual assault in the horrific death of 24-year-old Shad Thyrion. What started as a night of drugs and intimacy turned into something out of a nightmare, leaving behind a crime scene that defies comprehension.
Join me as I walk through the chilling details of this case, the disturbing mindset behind the crime, and the shocking courtroom moments that followed. This one is as dark as it gets—so buckle up.
* Listener discretion is advised.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I’m your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hey guys, here we are coming to you from Texas, and it is going to get cold tonight.
0:36 Everyone’s freaking out already.
0:38 I know that all you northerners are used to this, but I’ll probably go to the store this afternoon and all the water, and all the toilet paper will be gone.
0:47 But it is, it’s supposed to, I think, get down to 11 degrees, which is super cold for us.
0:55 And then I think it’s supposed to snow and then melt and then freeze over or something.
1:02 I’m not sure.
1:03 Anyway, everybody’s already freaking out.
1:06 I’m pretty sure that most of the schools are probably already talking about closing in the morning, even though there is zero precipitation on the ground right now and it’s about 40 degrees.
1:16 It’s kind of funny how different it is here and my husbands from North Dakota.
1:21 I know I’ve told you all that before, so he kind of laughs at us because, you know, we start to panic early and there, it’s just always that way.
1:30 It’s kind of funny.
1:31 Well, most of y’all know that I participated in the filming of season 21 of the Blocks last week.
1:41 It was amazing.
1:42 It was empowering, and it gave me kind of like a newfound confidence.
1:48 It’s a little bit strange, but I want to, I guess, talk a little bit about that this morning because I was thinking about it and You know, over the years I’ve met a lot of people as a sexual assault nurse who had been victimized multiple times, and I am also a victim of domestic violence.
2:12 I feel like I can somewhat speak on this, but I want to encourage everybody to use the negative things that have happened to them and try to make something positive out of it.
2:26 Over the last few years, I personally have not had any problem at all removing people from my life who do not bring me joy.
2:35 And I know it’s hard to do for a lot of people, but I’m very soft-hearted, I’ve always been one who gets my feelings hurt really easily, and I’m learning that I need to take care of myself and my own mental health.
2:55 I just want to encourage people who have been in relationships where there is domestic violence or are continuously surrounded by people who just literally suck the life out of you to make some changes.
3:11 I have not had so much peace as I have lately by just not having to deal with those people that just like suck me dry.
3:22 I have chosen to use the negative things that have happened to me and instead of spending that energy on the negative, to turn something positive out of it.
3:35 I think that’s the reason as a domestic violence survivor, why I chose to do sexual assault nursing.
3:42 I was like, OK, I can relate to these people, and I feel like I can really help them.
3:48 I’m going to use all that energy that I have that I could.
3:52 Sit in a corner and feel sorry for myself and continue to put myself in bad situations and be with bad people or people who are not good for me, or I can turn around and use that energy to help other people.
4:08 I don’t know why I just felt like someone needed to hear this this morning, but there was a time when I was a complete doormat, like literally you could have stomped and wiped your feet on me at the front door.
4:23 And I think just lessons learned over the lifetime have made me so much stronger.
4:31 I’m the one now in my husband and I’s relationship who will speak up if we’re at a restaurant and something’s wrong.
4:39 The food’s cold or we got someone else’s drinks or whatever, and it’s not like in a bad way.
4:46 I’m not like bitchy about it.
4:48 Literally, usually I’m besties with the manager and walk away with a gift certificate when I’m done.
4:54 But I know now as a business owner that that business owner would want to know.
5:00 That their customers are getting poor service.
5:02 And so I worded in a way that, hey, I’m trying to help you by telling you this, and it’s always taken really well.
5:11 Even in my med spa business, on my booking app, there’s a little toggle switch that says fire this patient.
5:19 And what that means is if you cause me grief and are a pain in my ass, I will toggle you and you will not be able to schedule with me again.
5:30 The same with my kids, just as I’ve gotten older, again, you used to be able to wipe your feet with me, but now I will maul your eyeballs out if you mess with my children.
5:40 That’s never going to change or my granddaughter.
5:44 And so I think that we just get stronger, and if everyone will use the bad things to make themselves better, that you can be so much more of a strong person and make something good out of something bad.
5:59 I hope that makes sense.
6:02 I was thinking, I talk about all these bad stories and all these bad things that have happened to people, and it sucks.
6:10 But a lot of people have been involved in domestic violence relationships and end up dead.
6:18 I feel like if they had just had that empowerment and that feeling that they can push forward and do something good and be better and do better, that perhaps they would still be alive.
6:32 That’s my take on it.
6:33 I also don’t believe that victims should be blamed at all.
6:37 I can remember years ago I’d do sexual assault exams, and the police would be like, well, you shouldn’t have dressed like that.
6:43 You asked for it.
6:44 You shouldn’t have been there.
6:45 You shouldn’t have gone with them.
6:47 And that’s not true.
6:48 You can do whatever you want to do.
6:50 And what happens to you is not your fault.
6:53 I just felt the need to say that cause I know, you know, we talk about people that are victimized all the time, people that are murdered and people that are sexually assaulted, and I just encourage people to put themselves first and to remove themselves from those people who are harming them or making them feel like less of a person.
7:17 Having been there myself, I know exactly how it feels.
7:21 I don’t know.
7:21 I just want to empower those people and notice I didn’t say women because men are victimized too, and many times men are the victims, as you’ll hear in the story that I want to tell you all about today.
7:35 This is the story of Taylor Schabusiness and her boyfriend Shad Theon.
7:43 On February 23rd of 2022, Shad, who was a 24-year-old, was murdered and dismembered by his lover Taylor Schabusiness.
7:55 This happened in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and there were other severed body parts, including his torso found in a storage tote.
8:07 You know, I don’t know what the deal is lately with storage totes, but I think y’all remember a couple of weeks ago, one of the murderers had put body parts in a trash bag and of course, when it started leaking, he graduated to a storage tote and then tried to return the storage totes to the store after he dumped the body parts in a dumpster and lit them on fire.
8:31 He rinsed out the storage totes and took them back to the store.
8:34 Storage totes are used a lot for these purposes, and so now it’s funny because y’all, when I go to like the store, I keep a close eye on people who are buying storage toads now.
8:47 It’s the weirdest thing.
8:49 Used to, I was like, oh, they’re so organized and… Da, da, da, da…
8:52 Now everyone is hiding a body.
8:55 It’s kind of funny because I’ve just run across a lot of stories lately where storage totes are used.
9:03 It reminded me of a story I want to tell y’all really super quick.
9:06 When I worked in Houston, I worked for Harris County for several years and we had a case where a lady was on hospice and she had, I believe, a son and a daughter.
9:20 Her hospice death was reported to her office.
9:23 I think she had a history of cancer or something like that.
9:25 And so it was expected, and she was at home surrounded by her loving family and no signs of foul play.
9:32 And so we released her case to the funeral home and the funeral home came and picked the body up and they had the service as normal.
9:39 Everything went great.
9:42 But over the next few weeks, her children, who were my age, you know, in their 50s, were cleaning out her home and were in the attic and found a storage tote with a child’s bones in it.
9:58 Recognizing it to have been a person, they called the police, and the police came to the residence and saw that it was a human skull and a child’s bones.
10:11 And so as they should, they reported it to the medical examiner’s office and, you know, we brought the bones in and in interviewing the family, it seems that when these adult children were smaller, they had actually had a younger sibling who disappeared.
10:35 The mom told them that she went to live with an aunt.
10:40 Strangely enough, I guess out of sight, out of mind, they never saw this sibling again.
10:46 And so they just assumed when the aunt lived out of state and you know, they were little kids and so they didn’t really do anything or couldn’t do anything to see their sibling.
10:58 As time went on and as they got older, their memory of this sibling and the fact that the sibling even existed just kind of got pushed to the wayside, and I guess it was assumed that maybe the aunt adopted the sibling and I don’t know, it’s hard to imagine.
11:16 I don’t know the dynamics of the family, but somehow this sibling was basically forgotten.
11:23 When the kids started telling this story, it turns out that the sibling had died, and we still don’t know how.
11:32 There were no signs of trauma and so like the bones weren’t broken or there was nothing indicating that it was trauma related.
11:42 In cases like that, the child could have drowned or, you know, but you would never know.
11:47 I mean, basically it was bones at this point and so there was absolutely no way to tell what happened, but it seems that the mother just put this small child in a storage tote in the attic, and then years later, and I mean, we’re talking 50 years later, the siblings find this small child’s bones in the attic.
12:10 It was kind of a strange story.
12:13 The mother had kept this story a secret her entire life had never told her children.
12:19 I feel like that’s something that I might tell my kids on my deathbed.
12:23 I don’t know though.
12:24 I mean, there’s always that fear that they would hate you after that, but, and maybe those were her thoughts.
12:29 And it just reminded me because I’ve run across so many stories lately where there’s a storage to involved.
12:37 Anyway, nonetheless, what happened was Taylor Schabusiness severed Shad’s head, and his severed head was found by his mother Tara in a bucket in the basement of their family home in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
12:55 Schabusiness was in a sexual relationship with Shad, and she admitted to strangling him.
13:01 It seems that at the time they were both on meth and prescription drugs, and so she then dismembered him and removed his internal organs.
13:11 Now when Tara found his severed head, it was in a bucket with a shower towel over it, and she found it in the basement of their home in Green Bay.
13:23 Taylor Schabusiness was arrested and charged with murder, mutilating a corpse and rape.
13:29 On July 26th of 2023, a jury convicted her on all three counts, and she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
13:39 She sounds evil, but as the story goes, and again this didn’t happen that long ago, 2022, at around 9:30 on February 21, 2022, Taylor Schabusiness picked Shad up from his mom’s house.
13:55 The couple went to an apartment on Eastman Avenue, smoked weed, and Taylor also said that she and Shad had smoked meth and injected trazodone after the friend left.
14:09 And then the couple returned to Shad’s house where he lived with his mom and his mom was not home.
14:17 They engaged in erotic asphyxiation frequently using metal chains.
14:25 Taylor then strangled him, and he began to cough up blood, and she continued to strangle him until he was deceased, which takes about 3 to 5 minutes.
14:36 Schabusiness was 25 and her and Shad had known each other since middle school and had been involved in a sexual relationship for quite some time.
14:47 That’s kind of the background behind this couple.
14:51 But Schabusiness proceeded to use sex toys on the body for several hours afterwards, and that’s where the rape charges came from.
15:00 The following morning she dismembered the body using knives that she found at the house, and again she was at his home where he lived with his mother.
15:10 She put the body on the bed.
15:12 She beheaded him over a bucket, and here we go, storage tote.
15:17 She then dumped the blood down the basement shower drain, removed the organs, placed them into plastic bags, totes, and cardboard boxes, and then she placed the head in a bucket.
15:31 Two days later, Shad’s mom found his head in the bucket in the basement again covered with a towel.
15:39 Later, police also found his penis in the bucket.
15:44 The police were obviously called when mom found his remains and found human organs stuffed into plastic bags and cardboard boxes in the basement.
15:57 There was later a leg found in a crock pot inside Taylor Schabusiness’ minivan.
16:05 Police found her later that day in an apartment complex, and her clothes were covered in blood, and she had a cut on her left thumb.
16:13 That’s a pretty good indication that she was somehow involved.
16:16 She had scratches on her arm that she claimed were self-inflicted.
16:21 Obviously, she was arrested, and she was charged with murder, mutilation of a corpse.
16:27 And 3rd degree sexual assault on March 1st.
16:31 Earlier that year, in January, on January 3rd, she was convicted and sentenced for three months for fleeing, eluding, and obstructing police.
16:42 And then after that, apparently, she had removed the tracker.
16:46 She had an ankle monitor and she removed that GPS tracker from her ankle.
16:51 Her attorney, Quinn Jolly submitted a not guilty, by reason of insanity plea in September of 2022.
17:01 But in February of the following year, on Valentine’s Day 2023, she attacked her attorney after he requested that the trial be pushed back so experts could determine if she was competent to stand trial or not.
17:15 This girl needs to be locked up.
17:18 Of course at that time when the attorney was attacked, she was at the courthouse, and she was tackled by a sheriff’s deputy.
17:27 Thank goodness.
17:28 Jolly, the attorney then asked to be removed from the case.
17:32 I think I would too.
17:33 I’m not going to sit next to a convicted murderer who has attacked me.
17:39 Forensic psychologist Diane Lyon testified that Schabusiness told her she had a thing with Jeffrey Dahmer a year ago.
17:47 In 2023, there’s no way that she had a thing with Jeffrey Dahmer in 2022 because he was murdered by a fellow inmate while in prison in 1994.
17:57 Now apparently during the three-day trial, detectives told the court about Schabusiness’ online searches for Jeffrey Dahmer walking into court all sexy in quotes, and Jeffrey Dahmer’s butt.
18:12 The defense had requested that those searches not be admitted as evidence.
18:17 The judge ruled in the prosecution’s favor in that case.
18:22 About 11 days before she killed Shad, Schabusiness took a bizarre selfie next to a cell phone with an image of Jeffrey Dahmer on it.
18:32 Apparently there were chunks of his flesh left in this basement.
18:38 She did obviously have an obsession for Jeffrey Dahmer.
18:42 On July 26th, she was convicted, first degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and third-degree sexual assault.
18:52 Third degree sexual assault is a criminal charge for non-consensual sexual acts that are less severe than 1 and 2nd degree.
19:02 This is a charge typically if the victim is incapacitated at the time of the sexual assault, which obviously Shad was incapacitated.
19:15 On September 26th of 2023, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
19:22 Strangely enough, and this happens, I guess frequently, but Shad’s father forgave her for what she did.
19:31 Schabusiness is currently at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution which houses only females, and this is in the city of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
19:43 On July 24th, though, while she was in prison, she requested medical attention for a staple that somehow got lodged in her arm after a fall.
19:55 And so she was handcuffed and taken to a nurse.
20:00 She was kind of laughing about it apparently.
20:02 And when the nurse approached her with tweezers to kind of help her, she pushed the nurse and lunged at the nurse, and then there was an officer in the room.
20:14 Obviously it was a sergeant, and so she struggled with the sergeant and swung a medical tray and hit the sergeant in the head.
20:24 The sergeant’s arm was injured, and she suffered bruised ribs.
20:29 I mean, she sounds like a little shithead.
20:33 Anyway, in prison still and is not even behaving herself.
20:39 She’s facing a count of battery as a prisoner because she tried to attack this nurse and wrestled with one of the sergeants at the prison.
20:50 I cannot imagine prison.
20:52 I mean, I’ve talked to people that have been in prison before, and a majority of them say they’re not going to screw up again because they absolutely, without a doubt, do not want to go back.
21:03 I can’t imagine.
21:05 I know that, I mean, we’ve all seen TV it looks kind of clickish.
21:09 Oh, if you’re in that group where nobody likes you, what a terrible life to have to just be worried about somebody jumping you or shaking you or whatever every day.
21:19 I mean, I can’t even imagine.
21:21 We all know how catty women can be, so she was in an all-women’s prison, so that’s even worse.
21:28 Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s a life that I want.
21:32 Yeah, no, thank you.
21:33 But apparently, in looking, there wasn’t really a motive for this.
21:38 Taylor Schabusiness apparently tried to claim that she was mentally ill, but I think what it all boiled down to is that they were just doing drugs, and she basically claimed that she didn’t have a lot of control over what she was doing because of the drugs.
21:54 The picture that you can see online of her taking the selfie next to the cell phone with Jeffrey Dahmer’s picture on it is super strange.
22:05 At the time she was 25, so we’re glad that she’s not walking the streets anymore.
22:10 She’s been convicted, and she’ll be in prison for life.
22:15 And again, sounds like she’s not behaving herself, so there’s that.
22:20 Anyway, I am headed to work this morning, yesterday was a holiday for us.
22:26 Anyway, have an amazing week and please be safe and stay warm, and I will talk to you next week.
22:32 Bye y’all.
22:34 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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22:49 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.