S3 Ep295: Crime Weekly News: Taylor Schabusiness Attacks Another Lawyer on Video!

Convicted murderer Taylor Schabusiness, serving a life sentence for the brutal 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, made headlines once more by attacking her attorney during a preliminary hearing on April 4, 2025. This marks the second time Schabusiness has assaulted her legal counsel in court. In this episode, we delve into the shocking details of the courtroom outburst, explore her history of violent behavior, and discuss the implications for her ongoing legal proceedings. Don't miss this deep dive into a case that continues to captivate and horrify the nation. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets!https://www.crimecon.com/CC25Try our coffee!! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:19Derrick Levasseur?

  And we're going to be talking about a familiar name to some of you, Taylor Shabiness. She's back in the news again, not for good reasons, and something that's going to sound eerily similar to what we've discussed in the past. But just a quick recap, in case you're not familiar with Taylor Shabiness. She's a 27-year-old woman out of Wisconsin. She was convicted for the brutal murder and dismemberment of her boyfriend, Shad Darian, in February of 2022. This case drew national attention, not only because of the gruesome nature of the murder itself, but also due to the subsequent courtroom incidents that followed. We discussed Taylor Shabiness on Crime Weekly.

• 0:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, we did a series.

• 0:53Derrick Levasseur?

  What, we do two or three-part series on that?

• 0:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I think, yeah. It's every time I hear you say Taylor Shabiness, I have to like, it makes me laugh because I know it's not her real name. I know it's just like a random weird name she picked and chose and then changed her name to it. This, this woman is, I don't know, I don't know, like, she keeps, she, they keep saying she's competent to stand trial, which means she's, but also they said Lori Vallow's competent to stand trial. So like, what, what does it take to be competent these days? Now, she's clearly out of her mind, Taylor Shabiness and Lori Vallow, but we're talking about Taylor. Clearly out of her mind. And we can't even just blame it on the drug use anymore because she's been behind bars.

• 1:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  And she continues taking part in, in these weird attacks on the people who are like there to help her. So we don't need to talk about what happened to Shad. It was horrible. She dismembered him. She assaulted his corpse afterwards. It just, this woman's crazy.

• 1:57Derrick Levasseur?

  If you have not seen the series and you have the stomach for it, go check it out. We have some police body cam footage in there. Essentially, Shad's mother found his head in a bucket.

• 2:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  In a bucket.

• 2:11Derrick Levasseur?

  And like, and like Stephanie said, there was a lot of things that transpired. Before, during, and after this dismemberment. Taylor's a sick person.

• 2:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's a crazy case.

• 2:23Derrick Levasseur?

  And the way she was caught, there's video of that as well, how they went to her apartment, still had blood on her. It's, it's an interesting case.

• 2:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  She came out to talk to the cops and she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, like, and then when she start, when she finally admitted what she did, she just was giving all this grotesque detail. I think she was a huge Ted Bundy fan, if I'm correct. Was it Ted Bundy or some other serial killer that she followed? Her father had, uh, charges for assaulting an underage girl. You know, you could tell that she was involved in drugs. So you could tell that obviously she wasn't raised in the best circumstances. Drug use did not help with what ended up happening, the, the reason she was arrested. But like I said, it's been a few years now. She's been behind bars. The drugs should no longer be an issue. This woman can literally not help herself.

• 3:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's not, she's not right because she was, she was arrested. She was charged with first degree intentional homicide. Um, she did plead not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, but in July of 2023, a jury found her guilty on all charges, determined she was of sound mind during the crime. And then in September of 2023, she was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Even after being arrested and during like the court proceedings, Taylor still exhibited violent behavior. In February 2023, she attacked her defense attorney during a motions hearing and, and obviously he withdrew from the case. She also filed an appeal in November of 2024, uh, appealing her conviction for the murder

• 4:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  of her boyfriend, but then she withdrew it in March of 2025 and then she acknowledged the fairness of her trial and conviction. But then in April of 2025, during a preliminary hearing for her allegedly assaulting a prison guard, which we're going to talk about that in a minute, she attacked her new attorney. And then she had to be removed from the courtroom and then this attorney also withdrew from her case.

• 4:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  So.

• 4:25Derrick Levasseur?

  His reaction, his, his reaction's actually hilarious. Well.

• 4:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  We're gonna watch the video, yeah.

• 4:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, if you're on YouTube, we're gonna play the video for you now. It's only about forty seconds. If you're not, if you're on audio, take two seconds, Google search it, it'll be the first thing that pops up. But here's the video.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  We're asking for a sequestration, but that may be a moot point.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Alright. It is one, yes, Your Honor.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  We're off the record.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Uh, no, let's take her.

• 5:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  I watched it, like, I watched like five times. I, I, I, this is my first viewing of it.

• 5:25Derrick Levasseur?

  She was laughing while she was watching.

• 5:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, this is my first viewing of it. So first of all, she screams something when she gets up to attack him.

• 5:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, well, I have no clue what she says.

• 5:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  It sounds like a battle cry. I don't.

• 5:34Derrick Levasseur?

  If anybody knows, tell us in the comments what she said, because I, I couldn't decipher it.

• 5:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's stunning because she kind of looks at him and you can see that she's like considering it, that she's like gets up, screams her battle cry, goes at him. The lawyer obviously initially reacts because it's startling, even to the person watching, it's startling. And then once they get her on the ground, he kind of just looks at the judge, looks around and he's like, well.

• 5:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it looked like he looked at the prosecutors and was like, oh, no, something I said.

• 5:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's like, it seems kind of like he's just used to this behavior, like, kind of like this is not a huge surprise to him that Taylor's business would randomly, in the middle of court, not only in front of the judge, but in front of the bailiffs and all of these people who are there to like literally make sure you can't hurt anybody, that she would, she would act this way. And he's just kind of like, yeah, I mean, this is kind of par for the course. Or, yeah, I was expecting something like this to happen at any time. As we said, Taylor has obviously a history of being violent. So he does not seem shocked. And obviously, I, I just don't know, they're gonna give her a new lawyer. I wouldn't take it. I wouldn't take this case.

• 6:38Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I, I'm trying to remember, because it was a while ago that we covered it, but I want to say we had Dr. Mohandi come on for this case. Is this the one that we had him come on? Because we were talking about competency.

• 6:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Thought, yeah, I thought so.

• 6:49Derrick Levasseur?

  There was one of the cases, maybe one similar to this, but a big discussion that we were having. Was is she capable of withstanding a trial, right? Like is she and and they obviously ruled that she was, but we were a little surprised by that because when you consider the crime that was committed and what was done afterwards, and then also these outbursts, at first you could chalk it up to maybe she's doing it to try to create the illusion that she's insane.

• 7:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think she can help herself.

• 7:17Derrick Levasseur?

  But I think she's actually, yeah, I think she's actually crazy. And I think this proves it even more like she's she's not all there.

• 7:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think she's criminally insane, you know, to the point where it's like.

• 7:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 7:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's not a crazy person like roaming the subways of New York City yelling at people and shaking their fist at ghosts. She's a dangerous person. So I think that's where it comes into the the the fact of the matter is, well, does that person like this belong in like a mental health facility? No, because she's dangerous. Like you can't fix her. She cannot be fixed.

• 7:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, she's a danger to her to the society. She's a danger to the, to be honest, the prisoners as well.

• 7:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's where we're headed because now she's in she's in prison at a correctional facility. She like fell on a staple or something. So there was like a staple embedded in her skin. And so one of the the corrections guards walks her down to the nurses station so that the nurse can fix this. And and these are the same kinds of opportunities she's going to have in a mental health facility if she was deemed to be like, you know, in, you know, unable to stand trial because of mental defect or whatever, she'd go to a mental health facility and she'd be attacking all these people because they said the complaint states that the nurse got the tray, started to get the tweezers to take out the staple. And that is when Taylor Shabiness lunged at the nurse and the corrections officer said

• 8:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  that she went and got Taylor down so the nurse would be able to exit the room. And the corrections officer said Taylor continued to struggle with the tray that the nurse had. And the CEO had said earlier that her head was hit, but she wasn't concussed. She had bruised ribs, pointed to her arms, saying that it hurt. And it should be noted that the corrections officer was also. Exposed to the OC spray when Taylor was sprayed during the altercation. So basically, um, the nurse offered a similar version. She said she remembered Taylor was chuckling the whole time. And the nurse asked Taylor, what was so funny? And then Taylor responded, nothing was funny. And the nurse said she told Taylor that it might hurt a little bit when she's taking the staple out as she went to get the tweezers.

• 9:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  And as soon as she made contact with the tweezers on the staple, Taylor grabbed her arm, pushed the nurse out of the way, then lunged out of the chair. And the nurse said she heard the tray too. And at that point she went for help. So got out of the room to get, to go for help. Um, and Taylor attacks the corrections officer. So that she's in court on, in April, because she attacked a corrections officer at the, at the facility she's being kept at. And then she attacks her defense lawyer. It's almost like Taylor herself is trying to tell everybody like, hey, I'm not, I'm not good. I'm a bad apple. Like nothing's good's gonna come from trying to help me or put me in a place where there's people who will try to help me. Basically, this woman's an animal, an animal.

• 10:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I don't even believe that animals deserve to be in cages. But Taylor Shabes deserves to be in a cage for the rest of her life, honestly.

• 10:19Derrick Levasseur?

  No, she's right where she needs to be. And I hope that while she's behind bars, she gets the help that she needs because you can tell whatever they're doing right now, it's not working. And, and kudos quickly to the, uh, the court officers, the, the constables that are there because they acted fast. And I know we're sitting here laughing about it, but that could have gone wrong really fast. If they didn't interact or they were, you know, not on their game, she's right there. She had her hands up. She could have done some damage.

• 10:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think she was handcuffed though.

• 10:50Derrick Levasseur?

  She's handcuffed, but take her fingers and shove it into the guy's eye. It's game over. He's blind.

• 10:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, he's, he's a better man than I would have been because I would have elbowed her right in the face as she came for me. I would have been like, boom, bye.

• 11:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's the, the quick, the quick actions of the constables, definitely the court officers definitely ensured that nobody was hurt. I, I don't know if Taylor was hurt. I looked like she almost bounced her head off the table when she went down. I don't know, you know, what exactly happened there. She might've been injured and that's why they took her out the way they did. I don't know, but it's unfortunate because yeah, she's where she needs to be. The real victim here is now Taylor. It's obviously Shad, but you would hope that whatever underlying condition this woman has. Is she gonna get out one day? Of course not, but at least treat her in a way where she can live a somewhat normal life behind bars for the, for whatever amount of time she has left on this earth because-

• 11:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Maybe she's got quite a bit of time left. She's pretty young.

• 11:45Derrick Levasseur?

  That's it. She's young. She's 27 years older. She was 27 at the time.

• 11:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know how you fix this.

• 11:50Derrick Levasseur?

  I think she's older now, but she's gonna be there for a while. She's a danger to the other prisoners. She's a danger to herself and she's also a danger to the correctional officers.

• 11:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  A danger to every single living person around her. And apparently, because we know what she did to Shad, she's a danger to every dead person around her.

• 12:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, that's-

• 12:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's not, she's, she's bad news, man. I don't feel bad for her. I'm not like, oh, I hope that she has a good life with whatever. No, I don't. I don't hope she has a good life. I'm sorry. She's a horrible person. And the, what she did to that man in his own home that his mother had defined his head like that, I hope she, I hope she has a miserable rest of her life. And I hope that they keep her in, um, what is it called? When you're kept away from everybody?

• 12:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Solitary.

• 12:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  I hope they keep her in solitary 24/7 for the rest of her life. And all she sees is the small four walls around her for the rest of her life. And there's never anybody in her, uh, her periphery that she can hurt again. Honestly, I hope she has a miserable life. And that's, that's that on that.

• 12:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I think we all agree on that. Shad's getting the justice he deserved. His, his, his offender is never gonna see the light of day again. Obviously Shad's family though, has to keep reliving these things.

• 13:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Derrick Levasseur?

  As they see her in the news and I'm sure it's not easy for them to watch these videos and think that this is the person who did what she did to their son. So, thinking of them right now, I'm sure if they had it their way, they would just love for her to go away and never hear or see her again. I'm sure that's, that's what I would want. I wouldn't want to see them in the news or on my TikTok feed or whatever it might be because right now, this is everywhere.

• 13:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, honestly, if it was a different state, this would have been a death penalty case. And honestly, if any case should be, this should be it. Cause this person does not get better.

• 13:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, there's no, there's no way she's getting out. There's no way she's getting out. So, I know different people have different opinions on this.

• 13:40Derrick Levasseur?

  But yeah, I'm kind of in agreeance with you there. It's she's not, she's never going to be out again. And it's clear that she killed Shad. So what do we always say, you know, eye for an eye. It's clear. It's indisputable. The evidence is there.

• 13:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. After her appeal, she withdrew her appeal and she's like, all right, you guys got me. You're fair. It's good. She's basically saying like, even when she didn't appeal and tried to say that the trial wasn't fair, you know, then then she withdrew it. And she's like, yeah, it was fair. Yeah, caught me fair and square. Like caught me red handed essentially like, yes, she did this. And not only did she do what she did, but then she desecrated his body in every single possible way she could, and then left pieces of it for his loved ones to find. Okay, she should be on death row. She shouldn't be anywhere in in the vicinity of regular people. She's, she's a bane of the existence of of the earth, honestly. She doesn't deserve to be around other people.

• 14:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, like you said, this was a plea slash sentencing hearing for the crime against the other prisoner.

• 14:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  For her crime.

• 14:40Derrick Levasseur?

  They have to find a different way to maybe through Zoom or something where you don't want to put her in the presence of other people, attorneys, court officers, the judge. There's no reason to bring her in. She's clearly a threat to everybody in that room. So hopefully going forward, they find a new approach to how they handle these things. Yes, they still got to do it. But the sentencing is almost irrelevant because she's not going anywhere. She's serving life in prison for the murder. But you got to go through the due process. You have a certain.

• 15:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Then if you don't, they'll use it to another defense attorney will use it to say she's not being treated fairly or whatever.

• 15:12Derrick Levasseur?

  But do we have to bring her into the courtroom? I don't think so. I think there's other alternatives that we can do. If there's an update in this one.

• 15:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  If she attacks somebody, if she attacks another one of her defense attorneys, we'll let you know.

• 15:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. So like I said earlier, if you want to hear more about Shad's case and how Taylor was involved in that case, you can go over and check out our multiple part series on it. We covered it extensively. We did a deep dive. All the information is there. It's a it's a horrific case. So I warn you now, make sure you're prepared for it because there's definitely some things in there that are tough to consume.

• 15:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's worth watching, though.

• 15:46Derrick Levasseur?

  So yeah, so that's going to do it for us. We're going to be back later this week with Johnny Stompanato Part Two. So make sure you tune in for that. Audio will be out on Friday. Video will be out on Sunday. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon.

• 15:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.