JACKSON, Miss. (TCD) — An appeals court denied a woman’s motion to overturn her conviction after she was found guilty and sentenced to life for killing her boyfriend and locking his body in a freezer.
The Mississippi Appeals Court released the opinion regarding Samantha Simmons’ case Tuesday, Jan. 16, affirming her 2022 conviction of receiving stolen property and first-degree murder for killing Thomas Burns in 2018. A circuit court judge sentenced her to life in prison for murder, plus 20 years for the second charge.
Burns and Simmons met in early 2018, a few months after his wife, Pamela Burns, died from bone cancer. Burns relapsed into drug use following Pamela Burns’ death and “carried her urn everywhere he went.”
Burns and Simmons started dating and Simmons moved in with him shortly thereafter. In March 2018, his neighbors reportedly stopped hearing from him or seeing him around, which made them concerned.
Burns and one of the neighbors, who goes by the nickname Jaybird, usually had coffee together every morning. Jaybird went to check in on Burns, and Simmons reportedly said he moved to Texas. Jaybird, however, didn’t believe it because Burns’ five cars were still at home.
The opinion says a second friend checked in on Burns, but Simmons also told him Burns was away. The friend, Debo, tried filing a missing person report, but the Lamar County Sheriff’s Office said he wasn’t allowed to because he was not related.
On May 21, 2018, Debo reportedly saw a truck towing furniture from Burns’ home. He called a sheriff’s office, so a deputy arrived and the two men searched the house. While inside, they found a green urn with Pamela Burns’ ashes and a gray urn. Debo said Burns told him he wanted his ashes to be placed in the gray one when he died. They also reportedly noticed a large freezer with a sheet on it.
The next day, Debo, Jaybird, and Burns’ brother went back to the house. There was music playing on a stereo, the front door was open, and the house was empty except for one urn, cleaning supplies, and the freezer. The men took the sheet off the freezer and noticed a padlock on it, which they found “strange.” One of the men took a crowbar and broke the padlock. When they opened the appliance, they found Burns’ body.
The court document says Burns was “placed headfirst in the freezer. There were zip ties around his ankles and a belt around his legs.”
Burns was reportedly “curled in a ball” alongside frozen food. A trash bag with a zip tie was placed over his head. The autopsy determined Burns suffocated to death due to the bag over or “environmental/positional asphyxia” because he was left in the freezer with the trash bag covering his airways. He was still alive when the zip ties were placed around his neck.
Investigators reportedly found Simmons’ DNA on the zip ties and she was charged with murder.
In her appeal, Simmons reportedly argued there was not enough evidence to convict her of the two charges, but the appeals court wrote in the opinion that her challenges were “unpersuasive.”
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