A Norfolk woman is facing five criminal charges — including three felonies — alleging she helped her teenage daughter abort, burn and bury her fetus earlier this year.
Jessica Burgess, 41, pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in Madison County District Court. Her then-17-year-old daughter Celeste Burgess — who is being tried as an adult — also pleaded not guilty to three charges, including a felony.
And a 22-year-old man accused of helping the two bury the fetus pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor and will be sentenced later this month.
A Norfolk police detective launched his investigation in late April, chasing a tip that Celeste Burgess had miscarried and that she and her mother had buried the body, according to a search warrant affidavit.
The detective obtained her medical records, and determined she’d been more than 23 weeks — or nearly six months — pregnant at the time, and was expected to deliver July 3.
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When he interviewed them a few days later, they told him Celeste Burgess had unexpectedly given birth to her stillborn baby in the shower, in the early morning hours after midnight, court records say.
She woke her mother, and they put the baby’s body in a bag and stowed it in the back of their van, he wrote.
Later — the records don’t say when — they drove a few miles north of town and buried the body, with help from a 22-year-old man.
On April 29, they showed the detective where — on a property owned by the man’s parents. He told investigators the mother and daughter had tried to burn the body before it was buried. And when authorities exhumed it, it showed signs of what the detective called “thermal wounds.”
In early June, the two women were each charged with removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body, a felony, and a pair of misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person; and false reporting.
But the investigation wasn’t over. A week after the two were charged, the detective served a search warrant on Facebook, to get access to their accounts.
He found messages between them suggesting Jessica Burgess had obtained abortion pills for her daughter, and gave her instructions on how to take them.
“C. Burgess talks about how she can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body and reaffirms with J. Burgess that they will burn the evidence afterward,” the detective wrote.
A month later, Madison County Attorney Joseph Smith added two more felonies to the charges against Jessica Burgess — for performing or attempting an abortion on a pregnancy at more than 20 weeks, and performing an abortion as a non-licensed doctor.
That was the first time Smith had filed those charges in his 32 years as the county’s prosecutor.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a case like this,” he said Friday. “Usually, abortions are performed in hospitals, and doctors are involved, and it’s not the type of stuff that occurred in this case.”
The attorney representing Jessica Burgess declined to comment on the case, and her daughter’s attorney did not return a call seeking comment.