MEDFORD, Oregon — Dennis Day was an original cast member of Walt Disney’s TV show “The Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s. He was charged with his murder and given a sentence of just over four years in prison this week after making a modified guilty plea.
On Monday, Daniel Burda, 41, pleaded not guilty to charges of criminally negligent homicide and abuse of a body. Over the summer and fall of 2018, Day, 76, was trying to kick Burda out of his home in Phoenix, Oregon, where he was living as a live-in handyman. If you plead “no contest,” you agree that the state can show your criminal charges at trial. It has the same legal effect as pleading “guilty.”
The government said Burda killed Day and then used Day’s name to steal money.
There were nine months of silence before Day’s body was found at home, buried under a pile of clothes. His family sued the Phoenix Police Department, saying that the fact that they didn’t find his body in his own home for so long, even though they went there several times, caused them mental harm.
The lawsuit said that during one search, cops stepped on Day’s body, breaking it. However, they still didn’t find it until April 2019, when Oregon State cops came with a dog trained to sniff out dead bodies. It said that the delay made it impossible for the medical officer to find out what caused the death.
The cops have said that the claims are false. A court case is set to happen in October in Jackson County Circuit Court.
Burda’s criminal case was put off for a long time because he had to go to the Oregon State Hospital to see if he was mentally fit to help with his own defense, and there were other legal problems as well. Court records show that he was also facing other charges while he was not in jail. He was also recently given a separate two-year sentence for theft, which brings his total sentence to just over six years.
