Did anyone else follow the Taylor Schabusiness trial?
Basically during a meth-fuelled sex session, Taylor, who had a husband and a toddler elsewhere, [graphic details follow] strangled her other boyfriend to death in his mum's basement, then proceeded to completely dismember his body and removed all the organs over the next several hours, using a bread knife. She placed his foot in his body cavity, and spread the body parts around the basement and her van. She also performed sex acts on and cuddled the corpse.
She admitted it immediately when arrested, claiming that she was choking him with a chain as part of their usual sex sessions, and just didn't stop and didn't know why. She seemed proud of herself, saying to police things like she "was riding him like a donkey" and "have fun finding all his organs". It came out in the trial that she was a fan of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and had googled things like "Jeffrey Dahmer outside court looking sexy".
She plead not guilty due to insanity. She does have a legitimate and quite extensive history of mental illness, along with diagnosed ADHD, and one expert said she was psychotic and had bipolar disorder. She has also had a hard life, with her mum dying of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver when she was only 11; being sent to live with her grandparents the other side of the country when she was in her teens due to being a problem child; and her dad being jailed for 12 years for paedophilia, four years before she committed the murder. She had been on hard drugs including heroin and meth for some time before the murder.
She suddenly assaulted her own attorney at one point and had to be restrained, followed by her eventually saying "what happened?" as if she didn't know what was going on. She also threw a chair at the psychiatrist who had to evaluate her.
However, she was probably hamming up some of the mental illness, and another expert disputed the diagnoses and pointed out evidence that she was faking or exaggerating some of her symptoms. Plus the meth use was probably more responsible for her mental state than anything. She spent the entire four day trial either smirking, or pulling a "lol wtf?" face, and gave the impression that she was amused and pleased with her notoriety.
The jury only took 45 minutes to find that she wasn't insane (at least not enough to absolve her of the three charges of murder, sexual assault, and mutilating a corpse), which I was surprised about, given that she undoubtedly does have some degree of mental illness. I think the jury definitely came to the right conclusion, but I still expected a bit more debate.
What I'm getting to is: I strongly believe that Taylor's extremely inappropriate manner in the courtroom negatively influenced the jury. This leads me to wonder what effect Lucy's not-quite-right courtroom behaviour will have on the jury in this case.
Most of us who saw her in real life only saw her a few times, whereas the jury will have seen her every single day. The people who saw her when her own barrister was cross examining her saw a snivelling, pathetic, fragile character, whereas she then went on to be bolshy, arrogant, extremely confident and totally unfazed by everything when it was Nick Johnson's turn with her. They will have seen her waterworks during Bowel Movement's turn and Soppy Bollock's testimony, then seen her absolute nonchalance and unbothered-ness during the whole rest of the trial, including when cornered into admitting damaging facts or lying under oath.
What on earth will the jury make of all of this behaviour? While not as bad as Taylor Schabusiness barely hiding her glee, this is still not exactly the behaviour of an innocent person fighting to be believed? Plus the massive change in demeanour when BM was questioning her surely makes her look fake?
Kind of a relief we were spared the anxiety tbh!
temp is back up to 40 too this morning, poor bubs.
I have seen the mod on Reddit say they saw baby I’s mum was GP in an article somewhere - do we know if that is correct?
