Green Bay woman wasn’t mentally ill when she killed and dismembered a former boyfriend, jury finds

Listen to this article

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A Green Bay woman wasn’t mentally ill when she killed and dismembered a former boyfriend and scattered his body parts at various locations, a jury found Thursday.

The same Brown County jury that deliberated less than an hour Wednesday before convicting Taylor Schabusiness, 25, of homicide, third-degree sexual abuse and mutilating a corpse in the February 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, 24, needed less than an hour Thursday to find she didn’t suffer from mental illness or defect at the time.

Brown County Circuit Judge Thomas Walsh set sentencing for Sept. 26, news outlets reported.
Schabusiness strangled Thyrion at the Green Bay home he shared with his mother, sexually abused him and dismembered his body, leaving parts of it throughout the house and in a vehicle, authorities said.

She appeared to suffer from a range of mental issues when she was evaluated at the Brown County Jail in 2022 and 2023, said Diane Lytton, an independent psychologist who testified for the defense Thursday.

Schabusiness, who had thrown a plastic chair at Lytton during an evaluation, was a “psychotic person,” the psychologist testified.

Defense attorney Christopher Froelich said Schabusiness was under a civil commitment order in April 2021 “because she was mentally ill.”

Brown County Assistant District Attorney Caleb Saunders said the issue for jurors was the defendant’s mental state when she committed the crime, not in 2021.

If the jury had found Schabusiness was mentally ill, she would be sent to a mental institution instead of prison.

Walsh ruled in March that Schabusiness was competent to stand trial.

In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.