A Southern Oregon homicide case that began nearly six years ago with the disappearance of a onetime child actor ended in soft-spoken tones in the courtroom Monday — and with an apparent lack of contrition.
Daniel James Burda, 41, was sentenced to a combined six years and two months in the Oregon Department of Corrections after pleading no-contest in Jackson County Circuit Court to charges of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree abuse of a corpse stemming from the death of Dennis W. Day, who was 76 when he was last seen alive in the middle of July 2018, and whose body was found badly decomposed inside his home when it was recovered from beneath a pile of clothes in April 2019. An earlier burglary conviction accounted for two years of Burda’s sentence.
Day was best known for his childhood acting role in the mid 1950s as a founding cast member or “Mouseketeer” on Walt Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” television series. Day had lived in Southern Oregon since the late 1980s with his husband, Henry “Ernie” Caswell. They had opened their home to Burda that summer. But about the time Caswell’s health started to decline, Day was getting less comfortable sharing his home with Burda.
Charges of second-degree manslaughter, first-degree criminal mistreatment, aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of a credit card and second-degree theft were dropped as terms of a plea agreement negotiated between Senior Deputy District Attorney Michael Cohen, Deputy DA Sara Shaw, and Burda’s defense lawyers, Peter Carini and Justina Lara. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but has the same legal consequences as a guilty plea.
Almost immediately in the proceeding, Burda made denials.
After Judge Kelly Ravassipour asked for his plea to the charge of criminally negligent homicide, Burda told her, “I didn’t cause the death.”
“You’re pleading no contest,” Carini told his client loudly enough to speak for him.
Deputy District Attorney Michael Cohen told the court that it’s known Day “didn’t disappear,” and that “Mr. Day and Mr. Burda had some spats along the way.”
How Day died, however, is a question they can never definitively answer, owing in part to how severely decomposed Day’s body was when Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon State Police forensics techs found it the first week of April 2019.
“Only Mr. Burda knows what happened in that house,” Cohen said.
Burda lived in the house for “many, many months” with Day’s body hidden beneath a pile of clothes in a bedroom. Day’s sister, Nelda Adkins, said in court that Burda would address the stench by using air fresheners and opening the windows.
Adkins, joined by Day’s nieces and nephew — Janel Showers, Denise Norris and Fred Richardson, respectively — are separately suing Phoenix Police Department for $2.2 million for negligence and emotional distress on allegations the police department botched the investigation in failing to find Day’s body for nine months when it was inside his home. It further alleges that police compromised evidence when they stepped on Day’s body hidden beneath the clothes. A four-day civil trial is scheduled to start Oct. 15.
“Our family is participating in this plea agreement because we need this horrible nightmare to end,” Adkins read aloud in court. “Dennis did not deserve this.”
The negotiated plea agreement called for a sentence of 50 months with credit for time served on the criminally negligent homicide charge and up to six months on the abuse of a corpse conviction.
Burda was separately sentenced last month to 24 months in prison after pleading guilty to a count of second-degree burglary in a February incident at what was then the Circle K, now a Pinnacle 365, at the Chevron station in Phoenix. According to news reports, Burda spat an energy drink in an employee’s face early in the morning of Feb. 14 after the worker called out Burda for trespassing.
Adkins, Showers, Norris and Richardson asked that Burda be sentenced consecutively based on his criminal history. The incident at the convenience store, for instance, occurred while Burda was facing a manslaughter charge in the homicide case.
“Burda is a career criminal not deserving of any leniency,” Adkins said.
Burda attempted to apologize when given a chance to speak, but the attempt quickly veered off course.
“I just wanna say I’m sorry to the family ... Dennis was my friend for five years,” Burda said. Moments later, Burda claimed prosecutors were unjustly pointing the finger at him for Day’s death and that the case was “all politics.”
“It had to be me, I guess,” Burda said.
Ravassipour told Burda he didn’t have to say anything further.
“There are a lot of things I wish to say, but I won’t because it’s not appropriate,” Ravassipour said.
She specifically dismissed Burda’s claim that it was all politics. She further said that his behavior while out on pretrial release pending a manslaughter charge was also behind her decision to side with the family, sentencing him to a combined 74 months followed by one year of post-prison supervision.
Outside the courtroom, niece Denise Norris spoke for her family with a combination of peace and resignation.
“We feel it was time for this to be over,” Norris said. “We’re OK with it.”
She expressed gratitude to Ravassipour for running Burda’s sentences consecutively, and also thanked Oregon State Police for their diligence investigating the case.
“We never would have been here without their hard work,” Norris said.
Niece Janel Showers thanked the work of victim’s rights advocate Shannon Elk, who for years kept tabs on Burda’s whereabouts and alerted the family when he had court appearances.
“She followed him and made sure we knew where he was at,” Showers said.
Thus ended a highly unusual missing-person-turned-homicide investigation, one that took the work of friends across the world launching a “Help Us Find Dennis Day!” Facebook group in late 2018 in order to get an investigation underway. The campaign, organized by Sylvia McRae living in the Gold Coast of Australia and Rosanne Reynolds of Oakland, California, started issuing press releases to local media outlets in November of that year.
The friends knew Day and Caswell through their participation in Renaissance festivals in the 1960s, ‘70s and early ‘80s. The Facebook page has since been changed to “Friends of Dennis and Ernie,” and now shares photos and memories of the couple in happier times.
Nephew Fred Richardson was in Roseburg when he spotted a KOBI-TV report of Day’s disappearance in late 2018. From there, the family was connected to NBC News, and a February 2019 “Dateline NBC” report on Day’s disappearance sparked a flurry of national headlines.
OSP ultimately found Day’s body inside the home April 4, 2019. Authorities confirmed the remains belonged to Day the following June, and Burda was arrested the next month.
-- Nick Morgan / Rogue Valley Times