Emily Brown
Article contains content some readers may find distressing
A jury in Wisconsin has been shown body cam footage of the moment police found a severed head and penis in a bucket as part of the murder trial of Taylor Denise Schabusiness.
Schabusiness was arrested and charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and third-degree sexual assault following the death of Shad Thyrion, 25, in February 2022.
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Following her arrest, Schabusiness had not guilty pleas entered on her behalf by the court and a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity entered by her former attorney.
The attorney who entered the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity quit Schabusiness' case after the defendant attacked him in the courtroom in February.
In March, Brown County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Walsh ruled that Schabusiness was competent to stand trial.
Schabusiness has been accused of taking advantage of Thyrion during rough sex and choking him to death with a chain before having sex with his corpse.
She was then accused of cutting his body into several pieces and leaving some of them in the basement of the home he shared with his mother, Tara Pakanich, for her and her partner, Steve Hendricks, to find.
A 911 call placed by Hendricks saw him tell the dispatcher his girlfriend 'swears that she found the severed head of her son in the basement'.
The jury saw body cam footage from the aftermath of this call when the trial began on Monday (24 July), showing Pakanish mentioning a 'severed head' to one of the responding officers.
One of the cops made his way into the basement, where he came across a bucket and called his partner to look for himself.
What exactly the officers saw was detailed in a criminal complaint against Schabusiness filed in Brown County, which claimed police found Thyrion's head severed from the neck, and a 'male organ'.
Recalling the scene in court, officer Alex Wanish said: "I went downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, to the right, there was a green bucket with a shower towel on top of it.
"Just to verify we had an actual head in the bucket, lifted the towel off and there was in fact a human head severed head in the bucket."
The responding officers called for backup as they looked around the basement, with one heard saying: “If we could get more units sooner rather than later that would be appreciated. We’ve got quite a bit of blood down here.”
Elsewhere in the basement, police found body parts in plastic shopping bags, and an upper torso in a storage tote bag along with 'several internal organs'.
As each side delivered their opening statements in the trial, Schabusiness' attorney, Christopher Froelich, told the jury: "I ask when you're considering all of the evidence, don't jump to a conclusion, don't rush to judgement.
"Please keep an open mind and listen to all the facts, listen to what every witness has to say, carefully and weigh what they have to say."
Schabusiness has been held in the Brown County Jail in lieu of $2 million bail.