Celeste Burgess, 19, has been sentenced to 90 days in prison after performing an illegal 29-week abortion and burning the baby’s remains with help from her mother.
Burgess had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of removing, concealing, or abandoning a dead human body. She had been facing up to two years in prison.
Earlier this month, Jessica Burgess, 42, pleaded guilty to helping her then-17-year-old daughter destroy the body. She was also the one who obtained the abortion pills online.
OAN reports, “According to court documents filed in Nebraska’s Madison County, Burgess was sentenced to 90 days in jail and two years of probation. Under the plea agreement, misdemeanor charges of false reporting and concealing a death were dropped.”
“The Court specifically finds that while probation is appropriate, confinement is necessary because without this confinement, it would depreciate the seriousness of the crime or promote disrespect for the law,” the judge’s order read.
The mother pleaded guilty to providing an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, false reporting, and tampering with human skeletal remains. Charges of concealing the death of another person and abortion by someone other than a licensed physician were dropped by prosecutors as part of a plea deal. She is sentenced on September 22.
In April 2022, police were told that the teenager had given birth to a stillborn baby in a bathtub at her home.
“After the teen aborted the 29-week-old fetus, the two burned the remains and buried them in a field north of Norfolk in northeastern Nebraska,” Fox News reported after the mother’s plea. “Authorities later found the burned fetus.”
When interviewed by police, the teen said that she had a miscarriage and that her mother had put the body in a bag in the back of her van.
Investigators were led to the corpse, which they dug up and discovered had “thermal injuries” consistent with being burned.
At this point, police obtained a warrant for the mother and daughter’s Facebook messages, which revealed that they planned to perform the home abortion and dispose of the body and evidence.
A report from the New York Post explains that in one of the messages, Celeste Burgess talked “about how she can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body.”
Abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy have been illegal in Nebraska since 2010. In May, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen signed legislation banning the procedure after 12 weeks gestation.
Tanner Barnhill, 22, also pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge relating to him helping bury the baby on his family’s land. He was placed on probation.
An attorney representing Jessica Burgess has requested a psychological examination prior to her sentencing.
