Mississippi siblings convicted in stepfather murder-for-hire case

A brother and sister from Mississippi were sentenced to federal prison for their role in a murder-for-hire plot against their stepfather, authorities said.

Joshua D. Bryan, 29, and Regan E. Bryan, 30, attempted to hire a hit man 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 news release Tuesday with. November 26th.

According to the criminal complaint filed in January 2021 and reviewed by PEOPLE, the siblings were listed as beneficiaries of a family trust worth approximately $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 home in Pearl, Miss., where she claimed her stepfather had abused 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, the complaint says.

The next day, the confidential informant informed the stepfather of the conspiracy against him. Over the next few months, the confidential informant met with Regan and Joshua, both of whom discussed the plan to kill their stepfather and how to get away with it in recorded conversations, the complaint says.

Want to stay up to date with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, breaking trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

The siblings were arrested in January 2021.

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

Joshua was sentenced to 120 months in prison. According to the district attorney’s office, he was already convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and murder-for-hire after a trial that ended on December 15, 2023.