Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Woman found dead in apartment

As the investigation starts, her boyfriend is jailed in Orange County on cocaine charges.

By ELENA LESLEY and LORRI HELFAND, Times Staff Writers
Published December 31, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Kelly D. Burgess, 27, found shot to death Saturday night in her apartment.

ST. PETERSBURG - Police are focusing their investigation on the boyfriend of a woman found shot to death Saturday night.

The victim, Kelly D. Burgess, 27, had lived at the apartment at 540 Carillon Parkway N with her boyfriend, Troy A. Sierra, 39, but was in the process of moving to Clearwater Beach, police say.

Sunday, Sierra was in custody in Orange County on cocaine possession charges, said St. Petersburg police Sgt. Michael Kovacsev.

Police are looking for his vehicle, a 2001 Honda Civic with a tag number C84-9IT. "He's been somewhat cooperative," Kovacsev said.

Kovacsev wouldn't call Sierra a suspect. But he said a number of Sierra's actions seemed suspicious: He had a domestic problem. He didn't show up for work. He decided to leave the county, and his car can't be found.

Police first visited the scene at the Promenade apartment complex after a report late Friday morning of shots fired.

Anthony Bodtmann, 42, was house-sitting for his sister-in-law, who lives below the apartment where Burgess was found. He said he heard a first shot just after 11:30 a.m., followed by moaning sounds and talking. There was then a second shot and a third about 15 seconds later, he said.

"I was terrified," Bodtmann said. "I grew up around guns and I knew what it was."

He immediately called police and said he saw a man exiting the apartment building just before they arrived - though he couldn't tell what apartment he came from.

Officers stopped by the apartment Bodtmann was house-sitting, Kovacsev said, before they knocked on Sierra's door and the door across the hall. No one answered Sierra's door. And the individual who lived across the hall didn't hear gunshots, he said. Police then left the scene.

"(Officers) did not find anything out of the ordinary," Kovacsev said.

Bodtmann said he told his sister-in-law about the incident when she came home Friday evening and pointed out a car parked in an odd place outside the building.

"It wasn't in a space and there were many spaces open," he said. "It looked like someone had just stopped to pick something up."

When the car remained there throughout the next day, Bodtmann's sister-in-law called police. They returned to the complex Saturday about 6 p.m. and determined that the car belonged to Burgess.

Officers searched Burgess' apartment, 3087, and found her body. Police think Burgess' family lives in Louisiana.

Bodtmann said he wished "cops had pressed a little further, even though I don't think they would have found her alive."

[Last modified December 30, 2007, 23:20:49]