A twisted Mississippi brother and sister plotted to hire a hitman to murder their stepfather — so they could swipe his $1.75 million trust and “bleed that motherf—er dry,” authorities said.
Joshua D. Bryan, 29, and Regan E. Bryan, 30, were sentenced to prison Tuesday for their roles in the murder-for-hire plot that also targeted his life insurance policy, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi.
The sick scheme hatched in December 2020, when a confidential informant met with Regan, who claimed her stepfather had molested her in the past and that she wanted him dead, according to court papers.
The informant then offered to murder him for $5,000 to “take care of him for the rest of his life,” according to the criminal complaint.
The informant then told the stepfather about the sibling’s plot — but continued to meet with Regan and Joshua over several months for secretly recorded conversations about the plan to kill him, according to the complaint.
During one recorded conversation, the informant asked Joshua for the go-ahead for the execution and Joshua told him to “do what he saw fit,” court documents stated. The siblings then spoke about their alibis and ways of paying a hired hitman.
The siblings were listed as beneficiaries on a $1.75 million trust that the stepfather would’ve inherited from their grandmother. They told the informant that she and Joshua would prefer to “bleed that motherf—er dry” and take every dollar of his estate than watch the stepfather, who was the main beneficiary, rake in the cash.
Joshua and Regan were arrested in January 2021, following an investigation done by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Regan was sentenced to 65 months in prison for conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which she previously pleaded guilty to, and Joshua was sentenced to 120 months after a jury found him guilty of the same charge in December.
