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On Monday, Daniel Burda, 41, pleaded no contest to charges of criminally negligent homicide and abuse of a corpse in connection with the death of Dennis W. Day. Day was an actor and a gay icon.

Burda's plea, which holds the same legal weight as a guilty plea, acknowledged that the state had enough evidence to prove his criminal charges at trial. This concession resulted in a relatively lenient sentence of just four years in prison.

Day was an original cast member on the Walt Disney “Mickey Mouse Club” television series in the 1950s. He was also a pioneer for gay rights.

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Day’s acting career starting at the age of 10 alongside Annette Funicello in 1955.

He came out as gay to his family when he turned 18. and moved to San Francisco, California. In a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone Day came out as gay.

He continued to work as an actor and dancer, including at Theatre La MaMa in New York and in Los Angeles.

Day married Henry Ernest Caswell, his partner since the early 1970s, in 2009. 

Day and his husband Caswell at one time ran a guesthouse for gay actors in San Francisco. From the 1960s until the early 1980s, Day worked for the Living History Centre, producing Renaissance and Dickens Christmas fairs. He also took on the role of Newington Butts at the Renaissance fairs. And later became an acting couch.

They moved in the mid-1980s to Oregon, first settling in Ashland, and then in Phoenix, where they had a house. 

Caswell worked for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, while Day made and sold wine jelly and worked seasonally for Harry & David.

Burda, who worked as a live-in handyman at Day’s residence, had been in the process of being evicted by Day around the time of his disappearance. Evidence, including Day’s frantic 911 calls seeking protection from Burda, painted a grim picture of the events leading up to his death.

The Search for Dennis Day

Caswell, who suffers from memory loss and was hospitalized for dementia treatment when Day went missing, reported him missing in July 2018. His inability to remember contact information for Day's extended family delayed broader search efforts. 

It wasn't until friends and relatives launched the "Help Us Find Dennis Day" Facebook page that the case gained wider attention.