Man sentenced to jail in connection with the death of original “Mickey Mouse Club” member Dennis Day

Daniel Burda pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and abuse of a corpse.

The family of original Mickey Mouse Club member, Dennis Day, are finally getting some closure in his homicide case.

On Wednesday, Daniel Burda, a live-in handyman at Day's home in Phoenix, Ore., was sentenced to four-plus years in prison after pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide and abuse of a corpse on Monday.

Burda, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press, pleaded no contest, which concedes that the state would be able to prove criminal charges at trial and is tantamount to a guilty plea.

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Day, who was 76 years old at the time, disappeared in mid-2018. He had been attempting to evict Burda from his property. Prosecutors claimed that Burda not only caused Day's death, but then concealed it and used Day's identity to spend money in his name.

Despite multiple trips to his home, the Phoenix Police Department did not discover Day's body for nine months, where it was reportedly badly decomposed beneath a pile of clothes in his home. Day's family has filed a lawsuit against the Phoenix PD, alleging emotional distress as a result of their failure to discover his remains.

The lawsuit also alleges that the police stepped on Day’s body during one of their searches, causing fractures to the corpse, Ultimately, they uncovered the body in April 2019 with the assistance of a cadaver-sniffing dog, but Day's family claims that the delay made it impossible for the medical examiner to determine a cause of death. The police department denies all of the suit's claims, and they will go to trial in Jackson County Circuit Court in October.

Though Day's body was located in 2019, it has been a lengthy process to prosecute Burda, as proceedings were delayed by multiple trips to the Oregon State Hospital to determine his mental fitness to assist in his own defense. Burda was also recently sentenced to two years for burglary in a separate case.

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Day was best known for his appearance on the first two seasons of The Mickey Mouse Club from 1955 to 1957. He also had a minor uncredited role in 1953's A Lion Is in the Streets. Day retired from acting and moved to San Francisco when he turned 18. There, he met his life partner, Henry Ernest Caswell, whom he eventually married in 2009.

The two worked in the theater both in San Francisco and Oregon. Day was last seen alive on July 17, 2018. His case was featured on a Feb. 2018 episode of Dateline NBC.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives at the Jackson County Circuit Court requesting records pertaining to the case.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.