Man faces first-degree murder charge in death of infant
tiny dancer
BY MATTHEW LAKIN
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
BLOUNTVILLE - Nicholas Burgess lived for 163 days.
He spent the last seven of them in a coma.
"He was the greatest thing that ever came into my life," said his
grandmother Jackie Wells. "He was just a little angel."
She believes her grandson's in heaven now.
Nicholas Skyler Burgess died Nov. 15 at Johnson City Medical Center.
Sullivan County authorities said his mother's live-in boyfriend, arrested
Monday night on a sealed indictment, crushed the boy's skull as he gave him
a bath at their trailer on Minga Road.
Nathan Daniel Puckett, 23, faces charges of first-degree murder and
aggravated child abuse. Sullivan County sheriff's deputies acting on a tip
found him at his father's home on Valley Drive after nearly a month of
searching for him.
Puckett was free Tuesday night on $75,000 bond - something Nicholas' family
still can't understand.
"If he ran the first time, why would they give him a second chance?" said
the boy's grandfather Ronald Wells. "What's he got to lose? Nothing."
Nicholas' toys - including Christmas presents he'll never open - still fill
his bedroom at the grandparents' home in Cleveland, Va. Their daughter has
gone into hiding out of fear of Puckett, they said.
Now they're back to waiting until Puckett's first court appearance March 11.
The wait just adds to the grief, Jackie Wells said.
"It's all just a combined hurt," she said. "I'll never get to see Nicholas
walk. I'll never get to see him take his first steps. If they give him the
death penalty, it won't bring Nicholas back."
The county's last person sentenced to death for killing a child was Bobby
Gene Godsey of Kingsport, convicted of hurling his girlfriend's 7-month-old
son across the room into a wall in 1995.
But state law could keep a jury from even considering that punishment.
Investigators don't believe Puckett abused Nicholas before the night he went
to the hospital, and courts have ruled that a single act of child abuse -
even against an infant - doesn't necessarily justify death.
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals threw out Godsey's death sentence on
those grounds in 2000, reducing it to life in prison without parole. The
state Supreme Court unanimously agreed.
"The assault had a total duration of only moments," Chief Justice Frank
Drowota wrote in an opinion. "The evidence in this case does not establish
torture or serious physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death.
... Taken as a whole, this case is plainly lacking in circumstances
consistent with those in similar cases in which the death penalty has been
imposed."
Prosecutors hadn't decided Tuesday whether Puckett's charges meet capital
requirements. That decision won't be easy, said Greeley Wells, district
attorney general.
"Fortunately, we don't see cases like this very often," Wells said. "They're
disturbing, unquestionably. Any time you've got a little baby killed like
that, it's terrible."
Investigators called the case one of the worst they've seen. The boy didn't
have a chance, sheriff's Lt. Bobby Russell said.
"A 5-month-old kid never has a chance," he said. "He couldn't even get up
and walk away or run and hide."
He couldn't even crawl.
Nicholas' mother, Crystal Burgess, asked Puckett to watch the boy for her
Nov. 9 while she worked the night shift at a convenience store. The pair had
lived together for about three months.
"That was his first night alone with Nicholas," said the grandmother, who
usually kept the child.
The store's phone rang around midnight.
"He called her at work and said the baby had stopped breathing," said
Russell, the detective. "She called 911 from her cell phone while he was
still on the phone with her."
Puckett said the boy had gone "in and out" of consciousness for about half
an hour, then went limp and wouldn't wake up.
Family members say Puckett, on probation for a drunken driving conviction,
wouldn't call 911 himself.
"She told him to call 911, and he said, 'I'm not going to call 911 and break
my probation,' " the grandfather said.
An ambulance took Nicholas to Bristol Regional Medical Center, and a
helicopter took him from there to Johnson City Medical Center.
He never woke up. Doctors pronounced him dead six days later.
"He was fine when she went to work," the grandfather said. "The next thing
we know, he was dead."
Puckett told investigators he dropped Nicholas while giving him a bath.
He said the boy threw up as Puckett pulled him out of the tub. Puckett said
he reached for a towel, and the boy "flopped" out of his arms, hitting his
forehead twice - once on the edge of the tub and again on the bathroom
floor.
The story didn't match the child's injuries, Russell said.
"The story he gave us was highly suspicious," the detective said. "At the
end, we asked him some more questions, and he said he didn't want to talk to
us anymore."
An autopsy showed Nicholas died of injuries to the back of his head -
injuries so severe they would have required slamming the 23-pound child
against a wall, the bathtub or the floor.
"The injury to the head was what got him," Russell said. "It would have to
be more than just a drop to do that."
Puckett also described turning Nicholas upside down and shaking him by the
ankles to try to wake him up, Russell said.
Investigators believe Puckett got angry when Nicholas threw up on him, shook
the child and bashed his head.
Assembling evidence in a case with no witnesses took about two months as
authorities waited for autopsy results and sorted through hospital records,
Russell said.
"In cases like this, you need the medical evidence up front," he said. "You
can't rely on your eyes or ears to say, this is what killed the child."
A grand jury indicted Puckett on Jan. 12. His arrest took almost another
month.
Authorities believe Puckett was out of state, in either North Carolina or
Florida.
Nicholas' family said they know the wait's not over.
"It's just starting all over again," the grandfather said.
Jackie Wells plans to be there when Puckett appears in court.
"I'm going to fight until I get justice for my grandson," she said.
"Nicholas didn't have anybody to stand up for him that night but God. Now I
have to be strong for Nicholas."