Mississippi Siblings Sentenced in Murder-for-Hire Case Against Their Stepfather

A brother and sister from Mississippi have been sentenced to federal prison for their roles in a murder-for-hire plot involving their stepfather, authorities said.

Joshua D. Bryan, 29, and Regan E. Bryan, 30, sought to hire a hitman to murder their stepfather in order to obtain life insurance proceeds, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi said in a press release on Tuesday, Nov. 26.

According to the criminal complaint filed in January 2021 and reviewed by PEOPLE, the siblings were listed as beneficiaries on a family trust worth about $6 million following the death of their relative, whose full name is redacted in the complaint.

The complaint states that in December 2020, a confidential informant met with Regan at her Pearl, Miss., home, where she claimed her stepfather had molested her in the past and wanted him dead. The confidential informant offered to commit the murder and Regan said she would “take care of him for the rest of his life” if he killed the stepfather, per the complaint.

The next day, the confidential informant let the stepfather know about the plot against him. Over the next several months, the confidential informant met with Regan and Joshua, both of whom were heard in recorded conversations discussing the plan to kill their stepfather and how to get away with it, according to the complaint. 

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The siblings were arrested in January 2021.

Regan was sentenced to 65 months in prison after previously pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder for hire, prosecutors said. 

Joshua was sentenced to 120 months in prison. He was previously found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder for hire and murder for hire following a trial that ended on Dec. 15, 2023, according to the district attorney’s office.