Speaker 1: When Danny Burrows disappeared from his home in May's Landy,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, his wife, Loretta, said he ran off with
Speaker 1: another woman, a waitress who worked at a restaurant Danny
Speaker 1: and Loretta used to go to when they were on
Speaker 1: vacation down south.
Speaker 2: But not everyone bought Loretta's story.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of rumors and deceptions surrounding Daniel's disappearance.
Speaker 1: Six years later, detectives executed simultaneous sirch warrants, one on
Speaker 1: Loretta's New Jersey home and the other at Loretta's sister's house,
Speaker 1: where Loretta had been staying. Investigators never imagined what they'd find.
Speaker 3: When we entered the house, we were all shocked. I
Speaker 3: think it was the last thing we expected.
Speaker 4: Honestly, she was.
Speaker 5: An elder care nurse for years, just taking care of
Speaker 5: other people, and when you look at this case, you
Speaker 5: could see through that mask.
Speaker 1: We're in South Jersey today for the conclusion of the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Danny Burroughs. I'm Sloan Glass and this is
Speaker 1: American homicide and just a warning that what you're about
Speaker 1: to hear is graphic.
Speaker 2: Please take care while listening.
Speaker 1: By May of twenty thirteen, Danny Burrows had been missing
Speaker 1: for nearly six years. The case had gone cold until
Speaker 1: prosecutors received a tip that Loretta Burroughs had forged some
Speaker 1: legal documents. This sparked a search warrant of the two
Speaker 1: residences where Loretta had been staying, her home and her sisters.
Speaker 3: We were of the understanding that it was for insurance
Speaker 3: for all documents with the capacity that could find possible
Speaker 3: items of evidentiary value related to a homicide or at disappearance.
Speaker 1: So as Loretta Burrows was being questioned at her sister's house,
Speaker 1: another team led by Sergeant Caroline MacDonald was searching Loretta's
Speaker 1: home in Ventnor City, New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Loretta Burrough's house was impeccably clean. When I entered, it
Speaker 3: smelled very fresh. Generally speaking, it was as if she
Speaker 3: was expecting visitors.
Speaker 1: Her beachy two bedroom, two back Duplaque sat a couple
Speaker 1: blocks from the Atlantic Ocean and just minutes from the
Speaker 1: many casinos and nightlife of Atlantic City.
Speaker 3: At that time I was conducting the search, I was
Speaker 3: the one photographing. My primary area of concern was her bedroom.
Speaker 2: That's where I started.
Speaker 3: What particularly stood out to me in Loretta's bedroom was
Speaker 3: the organizational aspect of her closets. She had every pair
Speaker 3: of shoes that she owned in their own little tupperware
Speaker 3: cases stacked on top of each other on the top
Speaker 3: of her closet.
Speaker 1: Sergeant MacDonald had the camera and her team had a
Speaker 1: system in place.
Speaker 3: Every time an item of potential evidence area value is
Speaker 3: located within the residence, whoever's searching that area will call
Speaker 3: your name so you can photograph it as it exists.
Speaker 1: While she was in Loretta's bedroom, the lieutenant in the
Speaker 1: guest bedroom called her name.
Speaker 3: In my mind, I'm thinking, okay, he found something of interest.
Speaker 3: So when I walked into the bedroom, it had bunk beds,
Speaker 3: some kids items in there, and we were made to
Speaker 3: understand that that is the room that when her grandsons
Speaker 3: came over they would sleep.
Speaker 1: And standing in front of the closet was the lieutenant.
Speaker 1: He had a puzzled look on his face.
Speaker 3: When you opened the first set of closets, there wasn't
Speaker 3: anything of particular interest in there. It was kind of empty.
Speaker 3: When you got to the second closet and you pulled
Speaker 3: open the doors and there were a lot of clothing
Speaker 3: items in there.
Speaker 1: Mixed in with Loretta's clothing and Christmas decorations.
Speaker 2: Was something odd.
Speaker 3: There was a stacked object and it had blankets draped
Speaker 3: over it and clothing items draped over it, things on
Speaker 3: top of it, appearing to cover up whatever the object was.
Speaker 3: He called my attention to it because he found it
Speaker 3: to be strange. They were the only items in the
Speaker 3: house that appeared to be concealed in a strange way.
Speaker 3: As we started to remove the coverings around the tupware containers,
Speaker 3: there were plastic bags, garbage bags.
Speaker 1: In fact, there were nine layers of black plastic garbage bags.
Speaker 3: As we dug deeper into it, we were finding little
Speaker 3: air freshener beads that were melting and coming apart. We
Speaker 3: were finding dryer sheets that had sense to them.
Speaker 2: You probably know where this is going.
Speaker 1: Even with all of those air fresheners, Sergeant MacDonald noticed
Speaker 1: a smell she described as decomposition.
Speaker 3: As it became stronger and stronger and started to fill
Speaker 3: the room, we stopped. I called the Medical Examiner's office,
Speaker 3: and as I was hanging up the phone with them,
Speaker 3: another sergeant who was present, he was coming into the
Speaker 3: room to let me know that Sergeant Doherty was interviewing
Speaker 3: Loretta Burrows and that we were going to find Daniel's
Speaker 3: body inside the house.
Speaker 1: You may remember from the last episode another team of
Speaker 1: detectives was questioning Loretta at her sister's house.
Speaker 3: It was almost simultaneously that the discovery happened, as well
Speaker 3: as the phone call.
Speaker 1: As the team photographed the many plastic bags, dryer sheets,
Speaker 1: and air freshener beads. Loretta Burrow sat with Detective Shallick
Speaker 1: and Sergeant Lynn Doherty.
Speaker 6: She simply said, oh, you, Detective Shallock, and I said yes,
Speaker 6: And she says, I want to talk to your Mirandezer.
Speaker 6: And at that point she tells us everything that happened
Speaker 6: Rightad said that they had gotten into an argument.
Speaker 1: She told the police the argument she had with Danny
Speaker 1: happened in August of two thousand and seven.
Speaker 6: Daniel pushed her on the bed, and once that happened,
Speaker 6: she got a knife from the kitchen and repeated stabbed
Speaker 6: Daniel and killed him.
Speaker 4: She said she stabbed him.
Speaker 7: She said he was in the bathroom and he fell
Speaker 7: into the bathtub, and that she left the body in
Speaker 7: the bathtub.
Speaker 1: Loretta said she killed Danny, but it was in self defense.
Speaker 7: Everything that she told us, was about her being the victim.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, Danny was recovering from shoulder surgery at
Speaker 1: the time and his arm was in a sling.
Speaker 7: That doesn't mean he couldn't throw her on the bed,
Speaker 7: but the way the house was set up, She then
Speaker 7: ran down the loft, down the steps, through the living room,
Speaker 7: into the kitchen to grab a knife, and then back
Speaker 7: through the kitchen, through the living room, up the steps,
Speaker 7: through the bedroom, and into the bathroom to protect herself
Speaker 7: from the.
Speaker 4: Person that was upstairs. The whole time, it didn't add up.
Speaker 1: So the picture that Loretta's painting would mean that she
Speaker 1: got into her car and drove to a theme park
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania for a vacation with her daughter and of
Speaker 1: Cole and her grandchildren.
Speaker 2: All well, her husband was still in the bathtub.
Speaker 1: And if you remember from the last episode, Loretta told
Speaker 1: Nicole that Danny called her during that trip.
Speaker 7: When we said, why would you tell Nicole that you're
Speaker 7: calling Danny and having conversations with him, and she said, oh,
Speaker 7: I was calling him to see.
Speaker 4: If he picked up.
Speaker 7: But you just said you knew he was dead. She's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 7: I just like was hoping. I mean nothing she said
Speaker 7: made sense.
Speaker 1: That's when investigators began to connect the dots.
Speaker 7: She's telling people that he's calling her from Florida, and
Speaker 7: he's clearly not. So she was laying foundations for people
Speaker 7: to not be suspicious of him disappearing the whole time.
Speaker 7: You know, why are you going to report Hi missing?
Speaker 7: I told you I talked to him.
Speaker 4: He's not missing. He's in Florida.
Speaker 1: You know what investigators were getting at is that Loretta
Speaker 1: had a clear plan over the last half decade. She's
Speaker 1: spun a tangled web of lies to cover the fact
Speaker 1: that she stabbed and killed her husband.
Speaker 7: I asked her in the interview, Okay, so you stabbed him, right,
Speaker 7: you're saying that there was this fight and you stabbed him.
Speaker 7: Did you ever think to call nine one one, Like,
Speaker 7: even in the heat of passion, if if you're mad
Speaker 7: at somebody and you stab them, which is still like
Speaker 7: a terrible, horrible thing, what do you do? You call
Speaker 7: nine one and try and get the medical attention. And
Speaker 7: then she said something to the effect of and he's
Speaker 7: still with me, right, Danny's still with me? Something like that.
Speaker 7: I'm like, keep like a vile blood around her neck?
Speaker 7: On a necklace, Like, what kind of crazy thing is
Speaker 7: she talking about? That he's still with me. I never
Speaker 7: imagined that she was going to tell us what she
Speaker 7: told us. And then she said, I just put him
Speaker 7: in a rubber made container.
Speaker 1: That's the same plastic container the police found hidden in
Speaker 1: Loretta's guest closet.
Speaker 7: We asked her, like, how did you put his body
Speaker 7: into rubber bean container? Shaguard just like pushed it in,
Speaker 7: And we specifically asked her if she had cut up
Speaker 7: his body or anything, and she said no, But then
Speaker 7: later the autopsy report showed that there were cut marks
Speaker 7: on the bones.
Speaker 4: And then she tells us that she.
Speaker 7: Had to put like transition into another container, which is
Speaker 7: the one we found him in, and that his head
Speaker 7: fell off, so she put that in a separate container,
Speaker 7: and she claimed to take the body out of the
Speaker 7: closet and talk to it.
Speaker 1: So just to be clear, Loretta says she killed the
Speaker 1: man she loved since they were kids, and she loved
Speaker 1: him so much that she stuffed his dead body into
Speaker 1: big plastic containers and then talked to the body.
Speaker 7: Six seven years, she's been traveling around with this body,
Speaker 7: keeping it.
Speaker 4: It's like something you watch on TV.
Speaker 1: At first, Loretta said she kept Danny's body in a
Speaker 1: container out in the yard behind their house in May's Landing,
Speaker 1: but she eventually dug up Danny's remains and put them
Speaker 1: into storage containers. If you remember, neighbors of Loretta complained
Speaker 1: of a smell on her property. To this day, they
Speaker 1: continue to wonder if Danny's body was under that tarp
Speaker 1: in her backyard.
Speaker 6: I've never heard of anyone ever murring someone and keeping
Speaker 6: the body. And not only keeping the body, she transported
Speaker 6: it to her second house and then transported to our
Speaker 6: third house, so it completely blew us away.
Speaker 1: Detective Frank Shallick arrested the sixty one year old grandmother
Speaker 1: and charged her with murder, and.
Speaker 6: Then investigator Lynn Doherty and I went to Nichole's house
Speaker 6: and sat down with her and explained to everything that
Speaker 6: had happened.
Speaker 2: Nicole is Loretta's daughter.
Speaker 6: She just couldn't believe it, you know, and Nicole I
Speaker 6: just lost her stepfather, you know, it was confirmation that
Speaker 6: and Nicole just lost her mother. Her mother was not
Speaker 6: going to go away to prison, probably for the rest
Speaker 6: of her life. It was very hard for her.
Speaker 1: Nicole had plenty to process, including the fact that her
Speaker 1: children spent many nights at Loretta's home.
Speaker 6: Daniel's body was stored in the bedroom of her third home,
Speaker 6: which her grandkids would use. I mean, she murdered someone,
Speaker 6: it's disturbing, but to put the body in the closet
Speaker 6: where her grandkids were sleeping. I just can't fathom what
Speaker 6: she was thinking, Like, I don't know, just it bothers me.
Speaker 1: Well, no one imagined the years of wondering what happened
Speaker 1: to Danny Burrow's would end like this.
Speaker 8: She kept them in the cart for seven years. I
Speaker 8: don't know what the I can't even get into ahead
Speaker 8: like that.
Speaker 1: I can't ruth Antovanny not only grew up with Danny,
Speaker 1: but she went to prom with him.
Speaker 8: How in the world, how do you make a decision
Speaker 8: to do that. It's sad, very sad.
Speaker 1: It was very sad, especially for Danny's brother, Ray, who
Speaker 1: had spent years trying to get anyone to listen when
Speaker 1: he said something here is not right. My brother would
Speaker 1: not disappear, And he was right. His brother was closer
Speaker 1: to him than he ever expected. His intuition told him
Speaker 1: Loretta was behind it, and her duplicity hit a dark
Speaker 1: dark side. Loretta Borough spent six years portraying herself as
Speaker 1: a scorned wife. She told everyone that her husband Danny
Speaker 1: left her for a young blonde in Florida. The reality
Speaker 1: was Loretta murdered Danny.
Speaker 9: Not only did she kill her husband, Okay, I see
Speaker 9: that occasionally, but that she then chopped him up and
Speaker 9: put him in a toat. But no, we don't stop there.
Speaker 9: She moved him from location to location.
Speaker 2: Damon G.
Speaker 1: Teyner was the Atlantic County prosecutor whose jaw dropped when
Speaker 1: he read about the case.
Speaker 9: You can't make this up. If you made it up,
Speaker 9: it would really be a bad horror film.
Speaker 1: Loretta moved Danny his dead body two other times and
Speaker 1: was in the process of moving a third time.
Speaker 9: So what mindset is there that when the moving vans
Speaker 9: show up to move you from one destination to another,
Speaker 9: that you say, hey, don't forget my body over there.
Speaker 9: It's unheard of. And her grandkids are coming to that home,
Speaker 9: they're visiting there, and she has something in there as
Speaker 9: bizarre as the remains of her late husband, Like, what
Speaker 9: is that all about? But the reality is is that
Speaker 9: if Danny burrows remains were not in that home or
Speaker 9: had never been found. This is a case that doesn't
Speaker 9: go to trial. It's probably not even charged.
Speaker 1: This is a crime Loretta could have gotten away with.
Speaker 1: It had been six years and up until now, there
Speaker 1: was no evidence that Danny was more than a missing person.
Speaker 1: There's no rationalizing what Loretta did. But could she have
Speaker 1: been in chalk? Was Danny really this violent man and
Speaker 1: she was responding in self defense?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 1: The trial brought out those answers. In March twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: the case went to trial and prosecutor said Loretta Burrow's
Speaker 1: motive was much darker and meaningless.
Speaker 9: Loretta had a gambling problem. She was addicted to gambling,
Speaker 9: and I believe that she wanted to stay in the
Speaker 9: area not for the purpose of being close to her
Speaker 9: children and grandchildren, but for the purpose of feeding her addiction.
Speaker 1: And no matter where Loretta lived in New Jersey, she
Speaker 1: was always a short car ride away from the numerous
Speaker 1: casinos in Atlantic City. Back in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: for example, those casinos took in over five billion dollars
Speaker 1: from the busloads of gamblers who played slot machines and
Speaker 1: table games, and Loretta was one of those gamblers.
Speaker 9: Loretta Burrows was greedy. She would do anything to feed
Speaker 9: that addiction, and that includes murder.
Speaker 1: Prosecutor Seth Leevy learned Loretta's gambling addiction dated back to
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. That's when she got in trouble with
Speaker 1: one of her employers.
Speaker 5: She over the course of time as a bookkeeper, was
Speaker 5: slowly embezzling money from the company she worked for.
Speaker 1: According to court records, Loretta stole four hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, and in nineteen ninety six, she was sentenced
Speaker 1: to fifteen months in federal prison. Her lawyer at the
Speaker 1: time blamed it on Loretta's gambling addiction.
Speaker 5: That kind of crime takes patients, it takes devotion to
Speaker 5: the crime, it takes knowledge, and so now you're looking
Speaker 5: at somebody in a different lens.
Speaker 1: As the trial began, two questions loomed. Would Loretta take
Speaker 1: a plea deal and would she testify on her own
Speaker 1: behalf Judge Mike Donio presided over the trial.
Speaker 10: I didn't think she would enter a guilty plea because
Speaker 10: I think she figured that, you know, if I'm going
Speaker 10: to spend most of my life, for all my life
Speaker 10: in jail, I might as well take the shot, even
Speaker 10: though I know it's a long long shot.
Speaker 1: The voice you were hearing here is Judge Mike Donio.
Speaker 1: I've covered a lot of cases. Rarely does the judge
Speaker 1: speak to reporters. It doesn't matter if the case is closed.
Speaker 1: It's just not something they often do. And as the
Speaker 1: trial started, Loretta got a big win. Judge Donio throughout
Speaker 1: Loretta's confession to the police, it's incredible to get his
Speaker 1: perspective as to why.
Speaker 10: She had a lawyer early on when they were talking
Speaker 10: to her, and then when they did interview her one time,
Speaker 10: the lawyer was not present and there was a little
Speaker 10: issue there. So I ruled that certain of those statements
Speaker 10: that she made would not be admissible.
Speaker 1: Without Loretta's confession, prosecutor said, Levy had to change his strategy.
Speaker 1: Here's Prosecutor Levy.
Speaker 5: She comes off as very nice, old, loving, grandmotherly woman,
Speaker 5: and her story is this big ogre of a man
Speaker 5: and came after me to kill me, and I stabbed
Speaker 5: him in self defense. That thought and that juxtaposition kind
Speaker 5: of drove my entire creation of the prosecution. She's one
Speaker 5: of the few that I would say is the closest
Speaker 5: thing or or potentially to a psychopath that I've ever met.
Speaker 5: What I mean when I say that is you get
Speaker 5: what's on the outside. You get smiles, you get a
Speaker 5: sweet voice, somebody wants to hug and help. And you
Speaker 5: know she was an elder care nurse for years, just
Speaker 5: taking care of other people, always taking care of other people.
Speaker 5: And when you look at this case, you could see
Speaker 5: through that mask and it's almost if at night she
Speaker 5: would unzip the grandmother costume step out into her real persona.
Speaker 5: So you know, we came up with this strategy of
Speaker 5: how to unmask her, of how to show the jury
Speaker 5: she is not who she says she is.
Speaker 2: Here's Judge Mike Donil again.
Speaker 10: The prosecutor said that this was like the Little Red
Speaker 10: Riding Hood, and like all these old folk tales, there's
Speaker 10: a lesson to be learned as a moral to the story,
Speaker 10: and the moral is not everyone or everything is as
Speaker 10: it seems.
Speaker 1: But no fairy tale contains the amount of graphic testimony
Speaker 1: and evidence.
Speaker 2: This case featured.
Speaker 10: Showing the jury bones torso that was found in a
Speaker 10: box in the defendant's house.
Speaker 1: There was also photographic evidence of Danny's decomposing body that
Speaker 1: was so disturbing that Judge Donio ruled prosecutors could only
Speaker 1: show it in black and white photos.
Speaker 10: I remember it was hard on the Jews, and when
Speaker 10: the photographs were presented with the bones, especially the women
Speaker 10: on the jury were like taken back and you could
Speaker 10: see that they were like visibly like wow.
Speaker 1: If you think it was tough on the jury, imagine
Speaker 1: what it was like for Danny's brother Ray. Judge Don'
Speaker 1: remembers Ray in the courtroom.
Speaker 10: His emotions would get the best of him. There was
Speaker 10: a couple times where I had to admonish him because
Speaker 10: he would come to court and hold up not in
Speaker 10: front of the jury, but when we would have motions.
Speaker 10: He would hold up pictures of Missus Burrows with a
Speaker 10: knife in her hand and things like that, and he
Speaker 10: would blurt things out, and a couple times I had
Speaker 10: to have a little talk with him. Let's let the
Speaker 10: system do its work and let's let justice prevail. You
Speaker 10: could possibly cause a mistrial. You could cause a problem,
Speaker 10: and that you don't want that, we don't want that.
Speaker 1: Loretta's court appointed public defender claimed it didn't make sense
Speaker 1: for Loretta to murder her high school sweetheart for what
Speaker 1: amounted to a few thousand dollars.
Speaker 10: The defense attorney who was representing her basically was heart
Speaker 10: being on the fact that there was no weapon.
Speaker 1: He claimed there was no way to know who killed Danny,
Speaker 1: did it, or even why they did it. He added
Speaker 1: that a cigarette butt was recovered with Danny's remains, that
Speaker 1: cigarette butt contained DNA, but that DNA did not belong
Speaker 1: to Loretta.
Speaker 10: He did what many defense lawyers do. You just keep
Speaker 10: raising issues and then in a summation he harped about
Speaker 10: reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: Loretta's lawyer pointed to Danny's toxicology report that showed drugs
Speaker 1: in his body, including amphetamines. The defense suggested that maybe
Speaker 1: Danny was smoking meth and it could have been a
Speaker 1: heart attack or even natural causes that killed Danny, but
Speaker 1: prosecutors at Levy reminded the jury that Danny was recovering
Speaker 1: from surgery when he died, and Loretta was the one
Speaker 1: administering Danny's pain medication. He stared at Loretta and said,
Speaker 1: you don't overdose on meth and then cut yourself up.
Speaker 5: We took a part the story one at a time.
Speaker 5: If she says I did this because of this, we
Speaker 5: proved it wasn't so he told another lie. We proved
Speaker 5: that lie wasn't so.
Speaker 1: Loretta Burrows never took the witness stand. But and this
Speaker 1: was notable to me. Her range of facial expressions were
Speaker 1: on full display.
Speaker 2: During the trial.
Speaker 5: I don't think I've ever encountered somebody who had so
Speaker 5: clearly two different ways of looking and giving off a feeling.
Speaker 5: You could just see it. The smile would drop, the
Speaker 5: eyes would drop, from going up into a smile to
Speaker 5: just cold.
Speaker 2: It was something that even stood out to Judge Donio.
Speaker 10: There were times when she would appear in court and
Speaker 10: she would be the quintessential grandmother and you'd look at
Speaker 10: her and think, there's no way that a woman like
Speaker 10: this could do something like this. But then when the
Speaker 10: evidence started to come in about the notorization about the
Speaker 10: bogus divorce, telling the neighbor that he left with a
Speaker 10: young woman and a hummer, And when you start putting
Speaker 10: all that together, now you see the jecho and high
Speaker 10: you go from you know, being like the grandmother to
Speaker 10: this devious woman that was capable of this deceit and
Speaker 10: these lies and ultimately the ultimate crime murder.
Speaker 1: What a scary thing to witness in a person that
Speaker 1: seems so innocent.
Speaker 5: This may appear to be a grandmother and may do
Speaker 5: things that are like a grandmother, but she is a
Speaker 5: cold bloody killer, and we have the proof in these
Speaker 5: two tumberware containers. The jury agreed and they convicted her.
Speaker 1: And it took just two hours for the jury to
Speaker 1: convict Loretta Burroughs of murder and third degree hindering apprehension.
Speaker 1: Now it was up to Judge Donio to sentence Loretta,
Speaker 1: and that hearing would leave everyone in the courtroom in tears.
Speaker 1: Judge Michael Donio presided over the trial of Loretta Burroughs.
Speaker 10: It was one of the three most difficult or toughest
Speaker 10: cases that I did.
Speaker 1: Loretta's sentencing hearing took place in April twenty fifteen. A
Speaker 1: month earlier, a jury convicted Loretta of murdering her husband,
Speaker 1: Danny and hindering apprehension.
Speaker 10: We don't sentence that day. Usually it's four to five
Speaker 10: weeks later and a pre sentence report gets prepared. I
Speaker 10: get the police reports, prior record and things of that nature,
Speaker 10: and I review all that and then put a sentence together.
Speaker 2: Judge Doni.
Speaker 1: I also heard from Danny's friends and family who submitted
Speaker 1: victim impact statements.
Speaker 2: Some of them were in court that.
Speaker 1: Day to share their statements, but it wasn't easy to
Speaker 1: hear over the sounds of Loretta's sobbing.
Speaker 10: She just sat there and cried.
Speaker 1: One statement came from a twelve year old neighbor of
Speaker 1: Loretta's who used to spend the night in the same
Speaker 1: bedroom where the Loretta was keeping Danny's body. Over Loretta's tears,
Speaker 1: her letter was read to the court.
Speaker 11: My dad told me that Loretta had been arrested for
Speaker 11: killing Danny. I was sad, but then the sadness turned
Speaker 11: into madness, knowing that she made me sleep in her
Speaker 11: bedroom with a dead body in the closet.
Speaker 1: Then came a man named Gary who played in Danny's band.
Speaker 1: He explained how Loretta used to cook dinner for the
Speaker 1: band and always insisted on making Danny's plate.
Speaker 5: And after every dinner we go back to the rehearsal room,
Speaker 5: he would get behind his drum kit and double over
Speaker 5: in pain, and we.
Speaker 12: Kept saying to something wrong.
Speaker 13: He oh, I'll be all right.
Speaker 10: And this went on every practice, and we knew Me
Speaker 10: and my bassfiyer knew there was something wrong.
Speaker 1: He believed that Loretta was poisoning Danny.
Speaker 12: I just have nightmares every day.
Speaker 10: He was my brother.
Speaker 2: He was like closer in my brother than me.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, but I'll never get over this.
Speaker 1: For six years, those closest to Danny didn't know whether
Speaker 1: he was missing or dead. You can hear that emotion
Speaker 1: in the courtroom. Loretta faced thirty years to life, and
Speaker 1: something about that stuck with Danny's brother Ray.
Speaker 12: January two thousand and six, and just nineteen months prior
Speaker 12: to my brother being murdered, New Jersey abolished a death penalty.
Speaker 12: It is of my opinion.
Speaker 1: She also researched that Ray placed a picture of Danny
Speaker 1: on the table in front of him and spent more
Speaker 1: than twenty minutes eulogizing his brother and condemning Loretta.
Speaker 12: Last time I stood on my brother's property was the
Speaker 12: day I followed the mister persons report Labor Day weekend
Speaker 12: of two thousand and seven. Because the murderer had changed
Speaker 12: the keep had entrance code, I couldn't even get into
Speaker 12: my brother's home. I believe that if I had, this
Speaker 12: investigation may not have taken as long, because I believe
Speaker 12: I would have found my brother's remains inside myself. On
Speaker 12: May seventeenth, twenty thirteen, approximately at eight thirty am, I
Speaker 12: received the calls stating, Ray, we found your brother. Instantly,
Speaker 12: I felt as if a large part of my flesh
Speaker 12: was ripped from my body. At that instant, I was
Speaker 12: taken back to day one, when I realized Danny had
Speaker 12: gone missing. I finally found out what the horrors that
Speaker 12: monster did to my brother and.
Speaker 14: How she allowed his body to rot for several.
Speaker 12: Years in containers, which caused me to drop to the
Speaker 12: ground and sob like a child, thinking of my poor
Speaker 12: brother mutilated and decomposing, while for many years the murderer
Speaker 12: was enjoying life. Again, I was taken back to August
Speaker 12: two thousand and seven and the several times I visited
Speaker 12: my brother's home listening to the monsters made up stories,
Speaker 12: repeated lies into my face, telling me he called while
Speaker 12: all along, my.
Speaker 14: Brother's dismembered, disembowed, rotting body may have very well been
Speaker 14: in the next room or just below the kitchen in
Speaker 14: the basement freezer, Your honor, how do I shut that off?
Speaker 12: After many years of mental torture and pain, I haven't
Speaker 12: been able to turn off. I came to the realization
Speaker 12: that I needed to reach out for help or I
Speaker 12: was going to give up on living.
Speaker 10: I believe that the only.
Speaker 12: Thing that kept me going was the need to fight
Speaker 12: for my brother's justice, because I knew Dan would have
Speaker 12: done the same for his little brother. Just trying to
Speaker 12: make it through each day is very difficult because of
Speaker 12: the horrors my brother adored, and how my mind is
Speaker 12: tortured with those images. I don't look forward to tomorrow,
Speaker 12: and since I can't simply turn it off, it has
Speaker 12: become a form of endless mental torture. What she did
Speaker 12: to my brother. Horror movies and nightmares are made from.
Speaker 12: And I am living in both your honor. I am
Speaker 12: not above begging, and after all I have endured the
Speaker 12: pass seven plus years, begging is about all the fight
Speaker 12: I have left. The letter was found guilty and now
Speaker 12: she deserves punishment for her actions. This in humane, premeditated
Speaker 12: murder demands the maximum sentence. Anything less would not justice,
Speaker 12: let an injustice to a good man that was brually
Speaker 12: and holistically taken away from his family and friends.
Speaker 8: I thank you for the to me.
Speaker 1: Ray spent every day as a spectator, sitting in the
Speaker 1: front row of the courtroom. After finishing his statement to
Speaker 1: the court, he needed help as he returned to his
Speaker 1: familiar seat.
Speaker 10: He was distraught. He was distraught, and rightly so. He
Speaker 10: was very close to his brother.
Speaker 1: Judge Donio then turned to Loretta, who addressed the court
Speaker 1: for the first time. You're about to hear Loretta's voice.
Speaker 2: I'm stand before you today.
Speaker 13: You were hunter to accept responsibility for some horrific actions
Speaker 13: and choices that have brought me in your courtroom today.
Speaker 12: I had the.
Speaker 15: State applied a different charge, I would have never taken.
Speaker 16: It to her and put the families and myself in
Speaker 16: the courts through extensive heartache and expenses that were in
Speaker 16: curve by taking it to trial.
Speaker 1: Had the state charged Loretta with aggravated manslaughter, she claimed
Speaker 1: she would have pled guilty. That charge came with a
Speaker 1: ten to thirty year sentence, So you can see why
Speaker 1: the state wouldn't offered that deal.
Speaker 15: If there's such a thing as two people loving one
Speaker 15: another too much, making the relationship toxic and difficult demands,
Speaker 15: then I truly believe that Danny and myself were guilty
Speaker 15: of this.
Speaker 13: I don't believe in closure or honor I don't believe
Speaker 13: I'll love her sleep right again, but I do believe
Speaker 13: in Philippias four thirteen that all things can happen through
Speaker 13: Christ too strengths.
Speaker 16: And said, I pray today that everyone will continue.
Speaker 17: To try to heal from this horrific, horrific situation. I
Speaker 17: pray that my sentence will give them some type of peace.
Speaker 17: No one knows what goes on behind closed.
Speaker 2: Doors or honor.
Speaker 13: I pray that I'll be able to help people who
Speaker 13: were mentally and physically abused. I'm sorry for my crime,
Speaker 13: and I'm ready to accept the responsibility.
Speaker 10: My God, all this because you didn't want to go
Speaker 10: to Florida. Wait till you see now where you're.
Speaker 7: Going to go.
Speaker 2: Judge Donio clearly had heard enough.
Speaker 10: I gave her a sentence of fifty five years, with
Speaker 10: three years for the hindering running concurrent. That means together
Speaker 10: for a case like this, justice is punishment, severe punishment,
Speaker 10: and making sure that it never would happen again by
Speaker 10: this person.
Speaker 1: Loretta Burrows will not be eligible for parole until she
Speaker 1: is one hundred and ten years old.
Speaker 10: Missus Burrows will spend the rest of her life in prison,
Speaker 10: so to that extent, justice was served.
Speaker 1: Next time on American Homicide, a couple's night out in
Speaker 1: Atlantic City ends with a carjacking gone wrong, but investigators
Speaker 1: believe there's more to the story. I'm Slunge Glass. Join
Speaker 1: me for Murder on the Parkway. That's next time on
Speaker 1: American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by
Speaker 1: emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's a American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American
Speaker 1: Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloan Glass and
Speaker 1: is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass
Speaker 1: Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is
Speaker 1: executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series
Speaker 1: is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with additional
Speaker 1: writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Kristin Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Speaker 1: Jessica Crimecheck. Audio editing, mixing and mastering by Nico Aarruca.
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