Original Mouseketeer Dennis Day's former handyman arrested in his death in Oregon
A man has been arrested in Oregon in the death of Dennis Day, the original Disney Mouseketeer whose remains were found in April at his own home, 11 months after Day's disappearance.
Oregon State Police announced in a news release that Daniel James Burda, 36, was taken into custody Friday and held at Jackson County Jail on suspicion of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, abuse of a corpse, criminal mistreatment and identity theft. It was unclear if he has an attorney.
Police described the arrest as "an active investigation" and declined to provide additional details to USA TODAY on Sunday.
Oregon State Police Captain Timothy R. Fox told The Associated Press that Burda did work around the house for Day and his partner of more than 45 years, Ernest Caswell, who suffers from dementia-related memory problems and lives in assisted care.
Neighbors told AP that Burda had lived with the elderly couple at their home in Phoenix, Oregon.
Day, 76, a Mouseketeer with Disney's Mickey Mouse Club for two years in the mid-1950s, had not been seen since July 2018, when he vanished in rural central Oregon.
Partly because of Caswell's medical problems, there was a two-week delay in reporting Day's disappearance to police; his family was not notified until six months later and only heard about it on local news reports.
Eventually, Day's ramshackle home and property were searched along with local cemeteries and canals, to no avail.
Day's car was found about 200 miles away on the Oregon coast in the possession of two strangers who claimed Day let them borrow it. It was impounded by state police and later searched, but there was no sign of foul play, police said.
Day was once among the most famous child performers on American television, dancing and singing on millions of black-and-white TVs across the nation, wearing the iconic mouse-ear beanie and sweaters emblazoned with his name.
His body was found April 5 but at the time police did not say where or how long it had been there, nor how it might have been missed during previous searches. His remains were identified June 6 by the Oregon State Medical Examiner's office.
Contributing: Maria Puente, Kim Willis, Hannah Yasharoff and The Associated Press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dennis Day's death: Mouseketeer's former handyman arrested in Oregon
