John Jefferson
Left to right: Joshua Druid Bryan and Regan Emily Bryan (Madison County Detention Center).
A brother and sister from Mississippi were sentenced for seeking to hire a hit man to murder their stepfather for his life insurance proceeds.
Joshua Druid Bryan, 29, and Regan Emily Bryan, 30, learned their fates on Tuesday. Regan Bryan was sentenced to 65 months, or nearly 5 ½ years, in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a press release.
She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder for hire. Joshua Bryan was sentenced to 120 months — or 10 years — in prison. He was found guilty in the case in December 2023.
Regan testified that in November 2020, she and her brother discussed killing their stepfather and that her brother encouraged her to ask one of her criminal friends “if they knew anybody that would handle the problem,” according to an order denying Joshua Bryan’s motion seeking an acquittal.
The document outlines recorded conversations between the siblings. In one call on Dec. 8, 2020, Regan told her brother that a recently released felon was coming over. Joshua told her three times in that call to make a “proposal,” court documents said.
When Regan mentioned the idea to the felon, the felon informed the FBI and began recording his conversations with the siblings, court documents said.
In a parking lot conversation on Dec. 10, the informant asked Joshua for the go-ahead, and Joshua told him to “do what he saw fit,” the documents said.
The informant then recorded a conversation with the siblings about alibis and how they would pay the hit man.
On Dec. 30, in a meeting recorded on video, Joshua wrote something on a piece of paper, showed it to the informant, then walked outside and burned it. The informant testified the message said, “Tell your boy to come on. I’ll make sure he gets paid handsomely.”
On Jan. 7, Regan met with the informant and the supposed hit man — an undercover agent — and wrote notes with further instructions on how the hit would go down. Those notes were later destroyed, too.
Later that day, the siblings complained about their stepfather and the mounting legal disputes between him and them in a call recorded on Regan’s cellphone.
“This is f—ing over with,” Joshua said in that call. “Hopefully everything works out real f—ing soon.”
Regan then told her brother about her visit with the informant and the hit man that day.
“Well, I hope he has safe f—ing travels,” Joshua responded.
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